Our Manifesto

The Green New Deal

Unleashing a Green Economic and Social Revolution. Read more...

Remain and Transform

Saying Yes to Europe. And its Potential to Deliver Climate and Social Justice. Read more...

Grow Democracy

Unleashing a Democratic Revolution. Read more...

The Green Quality of Life Guarantee

Unleashing a Revolution in Public Services and the Public Realm. Read more...

The New Deal for Tax and Spend

Unleashing a Revolution in the Redistribution on Wealth. Read more...

Green New Deal

Unleashing a Green Economic and Social Revolution. Read more...

Remain and Transform

Saying Yes to Europe. And its Potential to Deliver Climate and Social Justice. Read more...

Grow Democracy

Unleashing a Democratic Revolution. Read more...

The Green Quality of Life Guarantee

Unleashing a Revolution in Public Services and the Public Realm. Read more...

The New Deal for Tax and Spend

Unleashing a Revolution in the Redistribution on Wealth. Read more...

Only the Greens say Yes to Europe and No to Climate Chaos

The Green New Deal

Climate strike42
  • This is a comprehensive ten-year plan ambitious enough to tackle climate and ecological breakdown at the scale and speed set out by science.
  • It will deliver a fast and fair transformation of our economy and society, renewing almost every aspect of life in the UK: from the way we produce and consume energy, to the way in which we grow the food we eat, and how we work, travel, and heat our homes.
  • This will be a combined investment of over £100 billion a year in the Green New Deal, with an additional investment in Universal Basic Income. Through this investment, we will provide new opportunities for everyone to work and live more sustainably and more securely.

The Green New Deal for energy

  • Introduce new support and incentives to directly accelerate wind energy development, paving the way for wind to provide around 70% of the UK’s electricity by 2030.
  • Introduce new support for solar, geothermal, tidal, hydro and other renewable energies to provide much of the remainder of the UK’s energy supply by 2030.
  • Transform the planning system so that it works to support a massive increase in wind power and other renewable generation
  • Apply a Carbon Tax on all fossil fuel imports and domestic extraction, based on greenhouse gas emissions produced when fuel is burnt. We will also apply a Carbon Tax on imported energy, based on its embedded emissions. We will raise the Carbon Tax rate progressively over a decade, rendering coal, oil and gas financially unviable as cheaper renewable energies rise up to take their place.
  • Prohibit the construction of nuclear power stations. We know that nuclear is a distraction from developing renewable energy, carries an unacceptable risk for the communities living close to nuclear energy facilities, creates unmanageable quantities of radioactive waste and is inextricably linked with the production of world-destroying nuclear weapons.
  • Encourage greater energy efficiency across the economy, including by providing energy efficiency training for businesses and public bodies, emphasising the need for behavioural change – we all need to value energy as we value money. Small businesses and co-ops will receive this training for free.
  • Ban fracking, and other unconventional forms of fossil fuel extraction, now and forever.
  • Find more information here in our full manifesto

The Green New Deal for housing

  • Empower local authorities to bring empty homes back into use and create a total of 100,000 new homes for social rent (council homes) a year, built to the Passivhaus or equivalent This standard will see these new homes use 90% less energy for space heating than the average home, significantly reducing household bills.
  • Improve the insulation of every UK home that needs more insulation by 2030. The material used for these insulation improvements will be sustainable.
  • Significantly reduce heating bills by improving 1 million existing homes and other buildings a year, so that they reach the highest standard of energy efficiency (over and above the Energy Performance Certificate A rating). Homes lived in by people on low incomes will be the first to receive these major improvements and benefit from reduced heating bills. This will be a deep retrofitting of 10 million homes by 2030, on top of the insulation improvements every home that needs it will receive.
  • Insulate non domestic buildings, addressing the large amounts of energy lost from offices and public buildings.
  • Transform the planning system and building regulations, so that all new buildings built by private developers are built to the Passivhaus standard (or to a standard that delivers energy efficiency at an equivalent or better level). We will enable self-build development that meets the same standards.
  • Change the planning system to incentivise renovation, extension and improvement of existing buildings, rather than relying on new build, to reduce the use of steel, concrete, cladding and finishes, which produce massive amounts of carbon in their manufacture. Similarly we will incentivise the use of sustainable materials.
  • Find more information here in our full manifesto

The Green New Deal for transport

  • Spending £2.5 billion a year on new cycleways and footpaths, built using sustainable materials., such as woodchips and sawdust.
  • Making travelling by public transport cheaper than travelling by car, by reducing the cost of travelling by train and bus. Coach travel will also be encouraged, with new routes for electric coaches provided across the country.
  • Creating a new golden age of train by opening new rail connections that remove bottlenecks, increase rail freight capacity, improve journey times and frequencies, enhance capacity in the South West, Midlands and North, and connect currently unconnected urban areas. We would also look, where possible, to re-open closed stations. These rail improvements will benefit from funding switched from the damaging HS2 scheme, which we will cancel (see ‘Ending wasteful spending’ section below for more details).
  • Electrifying all railway lines that connect cities, improving punctuality.
  • Creating a government-owned rolling stock company which would invest in a fleet of new electric trains to run on newly electrified lines.
  • Apply a Carbon Tax on all fossil fuels, as outlined above in the ‘Green New Deal for energy’ section, which will increase the cost of petrol, diesel and shipping fuel, as well as on aviation fuel for domestic flights. Domestic flights will also lose their VAT exemption and there will be an additional surcharge on domestic aviation fuel to account for the increased warming effect of emissions release at altitude. We will lobby against the international rules that prevent action being taken to tax international aviation fuel
  • Ban advertising for flights, and introduce a Frequent Flyer Levy to reduce the impact of the 15% of people who take 70% of flights. This Frequent Flyer Tax Levy will only apply to people who take more than one (return) flight a year, discouraging excessive flying.
  • Stop the building of new runways and all increased road capacity, saving thousands of acres of countryside every year and protecting people from the harm of increased air pollution and traffic danger.
  • Find more information here in our full manifesto

The Green New Deal for industry

  • Bring back the UK as an internationally recognised manufacturing powerhouse with proactive, wide-scale support for the UK-based manufacturing of renewable energy infrastructure
  • Invest £2 billion a year in training and skills (including new apprenticeships), to help people access the new, decent jobs created through the transition to a low carbon economy.
  • Give local authorities the power to direct the newly created training and skills programmes. National government will provide the funding and democratically elected local authorities will be given the power to decide how it should be spent, to help residents’ access new jobs.
  • Encourage a shift from models of ownership to usership, such as with car-sharing platforms and neighbourhood libraries for tools and equipment.
  • Ban the production of single-use plastics for use in packaging and invest in research and development into alternatives to plastic. We will also extend the successful tax on plastic bags to cover plastic bottles, single-use plastics and microplastics, and extend plastic bottle deposit schemes.
  • Develop and implement a reformed waste strategy where manufacturers and retailers are required to pay the full cost of recycling and disposing of the packaging they produce.
  • Find more information here in our full manifesto

The Green New Deal for forestry and farming

  • Work with farmers to refocus farm subsidies to help farmers transition to more sustainable, diverse and environmentally friendly forms of land use, including organic farming, agroforestry and mixed farming, and away from intensive livestock farming.
  • Encourage the expansion and replanting of majority of hedgerows lost in the last 50 years through new subsidies, creating new environments for wildlife.
  • Legislate to give farmers greater security of tenure, so that they can invest in sustainable improvements to their land, whilst ending the use of land as a tax shelter and encouraging new entrants into farming
  • Create thousands of new jobs in rural areas, through the shift away from intensive farming towards smaller-scale, more people-focussed food production and land management that respects nature. We will invest in training and skills to help people develop and apply the skills needed in these new jobs.
  • Plant 700 million new trees and aim for 50% of all farms to be engaged in agroforestry by 2030. We will encourage the planting of more trees in more towns and cities, including apple, nut and other crop trees than can produce food.. The new woodland, when fully grown, will store carbon, provide home-grown timber and create new wildlife-rich environments. We will support farmers to diversify their incomes through new forest management.
  • Encourage urban food growing, including new community farms and allotments, through the planning system, as well as matching those with gardens and who want to grow food with those with the skills to undertake the work for communal benefit. Similarly we will encourage the creation of new green spaces wherever they can take root – from pocket parks on vacant land, to living green roofs and walls. We will also encourage urban gardeners to plan for wildlife – opting for grass and shrubs over paving in a garden can create vital new habitats for wildlife.
  • Legislate for a right to food, giving everyone access to healthy, nutritious, locally grown food, including the creation of new providers to supply this food at an affordable price to schools. We will also promote children’s access to healthy food and tackle childhood obesity, including by updating the School Food Standards to reflect the latest nutritional guidance and apply to all schools, and renaming ‘Free School Meals’ the ‘School Meals Allowance’ to tackle stigma.
  • Find more information here in our full manifesto

The Green New Deal for incomes

  • Phase in the introduction of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) sufficient to cover an adult’s basic needs. UBI will be an unconditional payment, paid to all UK residents regardless of employment status.
  • Replace most income-related benefits with UBI (except for the additional benefits described below). Replacing a large range of variously means-tested benefits with one unconditional payment will simplify and streamline the system.
  • Ensure nobody will be worse off. The adult rate of UBI of £89 per week will result in around a 6% increase in disposable income over five years for someone in full-time work and paid the average salary. It is our firm intention to increase in particular adult rates at regular intervals during the first full parliamentary term.
  • Include additional payments above the basic adult rate for some groups of people:
  • Pensioners will receive a weekly payment totalling £178.
  • Disabled people will receive an additional supplement to their UBI, as will lone parents and lone pensioners.
  • People who were reliant on Housing Benefit before UBI was introduced will continue to receive it, so that they can cover their rent.
  • Families with an income of under £50,000 per year will receive an additional supplement of £70 per week for each of their first two children and a further £50 per week for each additional child.
  • Find more information here in our full manifesto

Remain and Transform

Caroline speaking2
  • A People’s Vote to decide the way forward on Brexit, in which the Green Party will campaign for remain. A commitment to realise the full potential of the European Union to lead the fight against the Climate Emergency and to improve the lives of workers, low income families and refugees.

Brexit and a People’s Vote

  • We are a proudly pro-European party and are unequivocally campaigning for Britain to Remain in the EU.
  • A Green vote in this General Election is an opportunity to choose remaining in the EU and transforming the UK. It’s an opportunity to choose a People’s Vote. It’s an opportunity to choose Project Hope over Project Fear.

Transforming the European Union

We want to build on the positive changes secured by Green MEPs in Europe so far, to further rebalance power within the EU in favour of citizens and national self-determination, and away from corporate dominance. We believe this will lead to a renewed focus on the EU’s potential to deliver effective solutions to poverty, inequality and climate chaos – and help secure a long-term, positive future for the UK in the EU.

Our plan to transform Europe will:

  • Advocate for the EU to prioritise policy areas where cross-border co-operation can help deliver real change. These include:
  • Linking up national Green New Deals, to pool renewable energy resources and share insights and expertise.
  • Co-ordinating crackdowns on tax avoidance and evasion, so no one seeking to hide from tax rules can do so anywhere in the EU.
  • Harmonising minimum environmental standards. As nature knows no borders, the EU can play a major role in ensuring that habitats split between different counties are all protected by the same rules.
  • Enforcing social rights and protections for citizens, such as a guaranteed minimum income for all workers.
  • Reducing migration in the long term, by correcting imbalances caused by labour-market inequalities across Europe. EU policies hold the key to this, including an EU-wide minimum income guarantee, EU-wide minimum wages, and fiscal transfers via the Euro.
  • Working for peace, security and human rights. The EU was developed by WWII veterans to support peace in Europe and we celebrate the success of this peace mission.
  • Enshrine Freedom of Movement as a core principle of the EU – enabling people to freely live, learn and love without borders.
  • Reform European refugee policy, centring it on principles of humanity and compassion. We will campaign to re-establish a European sea-rescuing mission, to save all lives in danger in European waters.
  • Press for an urgent review on the safety of all migrants travelling to and across Europe.
  • Find more information here in our full manifesto

Growing Democracy

EUMarch23-06-2018 (63)2
  • Replace the First Past the Post system for parliamentary elections with a fair and proportional voting system. We are champions of the Good Systems Agreement, a cross-party commitment to democratic reform brokered by the Make Votes Matter campaign group.
  • Create a fully elected House of Lords. Members will be elected for a maximum of ten years with half of the house being elected every 5 years.
  • Give 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote and have a say on their future. We will also allow people to stand for Parliament and all other elected offices from the age of 16, offering support to elected young people so that they can combine their duties with studying. We are proud to march with the inspiring Youth Strike activists against climate chaos and know the passion and wisdom young people can inject into our policies.
  • Require all political parties to report the diversity of their candidates, so that progress in selecting more women and minorities to contest Westminster and local government seats can be monitored.
  • Protect the BBC, reinstate free TV licences for over-75-year-olds and tighten the rules on media ownership so no individual or company owns more than 20% of a media market.
  • Back a Citizens Convention and citizens assemblies to examine further ways to strengthen democracy, including developing a written People’s Constitution and Bill of Rights, and ensure the proposals come before Parliament. This will enshrine genuine democracy at the core of our political system, making sure that ultimate power will always rest with the people.
  • Find more information here in our full manifesto

Shaking up central government

  • Create a new government department to oversee the implementation of the Green New Deal, led by a Carbon Chancellor, based at number 11 Downing Street to put the just transition to a net zero economy right at the heart of government. The Carbon Chancellor will set a yearly Carbon Budget, which will drive the decarbonisation of the economy. We will create a fossil fuel free politics, with vested interests who depend on continued fossil fuel use banished from positions of influence.
  • Move away from consumption and Gross Domestic Product as key measures of economic success and towards indicators that measure human and ecological wellbeing, such as work/life balance and quality of life.
  • Introduce a Future Generations Act for England, modelled on the current Act for Wales, building the needs of future generations into every government decision. We will also appoint a Minister for Future Generations to represent young people at the heart of government.
  • Scrap the Home Office, and end its decades-long creation of a hostile environment for Black Minority Ethnic (BME) and other minority communities. We will instead create a a Ministry for Sanctuary and a Ministry of the Interior. The Ministry for Sanctuary will be responsible for enforcing migration rules with compassion, and due regard for human rights, as well as providing recompense for those affected by the Windrush scandal. One of the Ministry of Sanctuary’s first acts will be to abolish income requirements for people wishing to come to the UK to join a loved one – no families should be separated because of how much someone earns. The Ministry of the Interior will oversee domestic security with full regard to human rights and the needs of diverse communities.
  • Close down the government’s arms sales activities, including the Department for International Trade’s Defence and Security Organisation (DSO), and end all subsidies and support for the UK arms industry’s exporting of weapons and systems that fuel conflicts, violence and suffering across the world.
  • Instruct all government departments to work to meet, and when possible exceed, the UK’s commitments under the Paris Agreement of 2015, which committed UN nations to combat climate chaos. The Foreign Office will be tasked with promoting the Agreement and other international agreements to tackle climate change around the world, and encouraging nations to uphold them.
  • Create a legal responsibility for government to give individuals consular support, rather than it being discretionary.
  • Find more information here in our full manifesto

Empowering Local Government

  • Increase central government funding to councils by £10 billion a year. This funding, combined with the local council revenue raising, will enable local government to improve the frontline services they provide and which local people need and want. We will support councils to also use this funding to nurture arts and culture in their areas, keeping local museums, theatres, libraries and art galleries open and thriving.
  • Give councils access to an additional £3 billion a year Climate Adaption Fund, Bids from councils facing the greatest threat from climate chaos, and councils with the high levels of poverty, will be prioritised as money is distributed from the Fund.
  • Give all councils power over bus services in their area, and over franchises for local train services.
  • Give councils clearer guidance and better training on helping homeless people, including support for the Housing First approach, a widening of the grounds on which councils can offer help to people without a home, and the provision of social services once a person is housed. The extra costs of this can be met from the £10 billion yearly uplift to council funding. We will refocus council services in this area on homelessness prevention rather than crisis management, through expanding and combining multiple funding pots into a single grant distributed to councils. We would also repeal the Vagrancy Act 1824, which criminalises street homelessness and can hinder attempts to help those without a home.
  • Provide an additional £4.5 billion a year to fund councils to provide free social care to people over 65 who need support in their own homes. This model has been in place in Scotland since 2001 and has helped millions of people be cared for in their own homes – it’s time to extend this right to free home care to pensioners in England (care in Wales is devolved to the National Assembly for Wales). We will also explore how this free social care at home could be extended to everyone who needs it, regardless of age.
  • Find more information here in our full manifesto

Global Justice and International Aid

  • Phase in an increase in spending on foreign aid from 0.7% to 1% of our GNI, making us the third highest donor (by Gross National Income) in the world by 2021.
  • Make the Climate Emergency and tackling poverty priorities for our international aid budget. We will phase out payments to richer nations and increase support for the poorest, to help countries deal with the causes and impacts of the Climate Emergency. Support will be given on the basis of need, not UK defence and trade considerations.
  • Require UK corporations to abide by the environmental, labour and social laws of their own country and of the country in which they are operating – whichever are the more stringent – and advocate for other corporations to do the same.
  • Support the introduction of an EU-wide carbon tariff on countries which are not reducing their carbon emissions in line with the Paris Agreement of 2015, to further encourage global action on the Climate Emergency.
  • Create a new international ‘ecocide’ law to prosecute crime against the natural environment.
  • Commit that any future trade deals will maintain and enhance environmental and food standards and workers’ rights, minimise the environmental footprint of trade, make trade terms explicitly subject to environmental and human rights commitments, and not undermine the implementation of existing or new national and international commitments (including over protections for vital global ecosystems and habitats such as the Amazon, and for indigenous people).
  • Find more information here in our full manifesto

The Green Quality Of Life Guarantee

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Delivering Secure Incomes and Secure Homes

The Green UBI will:

  • Provide all pensioners with a decent income, recognising their contribution to society over their lifetimes. All pensioners will receive £178 a week (£10 higher than the current highest possible state pension payment). This rate will be increased in line with inflation over the years to come.
  • Be phased in, with the first tranche of people to receive it being women born in the 1950s. These women, represented by the campaign Group WASPI (Women against State Pension Inequality) have been penalised by unnecessarily abrupt changes to the pension age brought in by the Coalition Government and it is right that are first to feel the benefits of UBI. We will also look at additional ways of addressing this injustice, which has affected hundreds of thousands of women. We hope to have fully phased UBI for every UK resident by 2025.
  • Ensure nobody who takes times off work in order to care for loved ones, or has an irregular employment record, unjustly struggles to access the state pension. Everyone will receive UBI, at either the adult (£89 per week) or pension (£178 per week) rate.
  • Provide a supplement to UBI for people with disabilities. This will help restore the benefits withdrawn from disabled people over the past ten years, providing more financial security.

Our other policies will:

  • Increasing the Living Wage to £12 and extending it to workers aged between 16 and 21.
  • Provide 35 hours a week of free childcare for all, from the age of nine months. This free childcare will include in-work facilities, such as on-site crèches and flexible working opportunities (e.g. job-shares) to help parents who choose to return to work.
  • Transform the lives of renters, by increasing housing security and bringing rent levels down, especially in places where they currently far outstrip incomes. We will introduce rent controls on private tenancies, which reflect average local income rates and the cost of maintenance. We will also end no-fault evictions and make it easier to set up community-led housing initiatives and for private renters in Houses of Multiple Occupancy to buy and run their home as a housing co-op.
  • Creating an environment where everyone feels fulfilled in worthwhile employment and pursuing policy which will lead to a shorter working week and better work life balance, freeing up people to spend more time with their loved ones and doing things they love – with no loss of pay. We will support employers to explore four day working weeks in their workplace, driving up productivity as well as boosting the wellbeing of staff.
  • Find more information here in our full manifesto

Restoring the NHS

  • Increase funding for the NHS by at least £6 billion per year each year, until 2030 (a 4.5% increase on the 2018/2019 NHS Budget), and a further £1 billion a year in nursing higher education, allowing for nursing bursaries to be reinstated. This will constitute a programme of sustained investment, bringing spending of health services in the UK up to northern European averages.
  • Roll back privatisation of the NHS, through repealing the Health and Social Care Act 2012 and abolishing the internal market. This will hugely reduce private sector involvement in the NHS, which has proved to be a costly and dangerous distraction from universal healthcare provision.
  • Increase funding to enable major improvements to mental health care to truly put it on an equal footing with physical health care, and ensure that everyone who needs it can access evidence-based mental health therapies within 28 days. We will ensure that tailored and specific provision is readily available for the particular needs of Lesbian, Gay Bisexual, Trans, Intersex, Queer and Asexual (LGBTIQA+) and Black Minority Ethnic (BME) communities, children and adolescents, and older people.
  • Replace private sector involvement in the NHS with community leadership. We will allow local authorities to lead a ‘bottom up’ process, and services will be planned and provided without contracts through Health Boards, which could cover more than one local authority area if there were local support.
  • Find more information here in our full manifesto

Unlocking Education

  • Relieve the financial squeeze on schools after years of education cuts, by increasing funding by at least £4 billion per year.
  • Free schools from centrally imposed testing regimes, OFSTED inspections, rigid national curriculum and league tables. Teachers will be trusted to plan their lessons and assess progress according the needs of their pupils, not to meet one-size-fits-all measurements that currently cause huge stress to pupils and teachers alike. Formal education will start at 6 years, to allow young children to develop at their own pace. Those under 6 will remain in early years education, with a focus on play-based learning and access to nature. Sweden has hugely benefited from using a similar system.
  • Strengthen the link between schools and the communities they serve, by ending academisation and bringing all schools back into the control of democratically elected local authorities, not private companies, and empowering local authorities with the responsibility and accountability for education within their communities.
  • Replace OFSTED with a collaborative system of assessing and supporting schools locally, to improve standards and be accountable to the communities in which they serve.
  • Fully fund every higher education student and scrap undergraduate tuition fees. University will be fully accessible, with courses being offered as learning experiences, not as pre-work training. Education will be for education’s sake.
  • Write off existing debt for former students who studied under the £9k tuition fee regime.
  • Find more information here in our full manifesto

Restoring our nature and countryside

  • Strengthen Green Belt, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Sites of Special Scientific Interest protections, with development in these areas only being permitted in exceptional circumstances.
  • Immediately ban the most harmful pesticides (including glyphosate) and introduce new rigorous tests for pesticides. Only pesticides that pass this test, and demonstrably don’t harm bees, butterflies and other wildlife, will be approved for use in UK.
  • Restore access to the countryside by re-opening lost public rights of way and creating new ones. We will grant to people in England and Wales the same right to roam over all landscapes as people in Scotland currently enjoy. We will protect and enhance access to inland waterways.
  • Commit to making at least 30% of UK domestic waters into fully protected marine protected areas by 2030. We will also work with British Overseas Territories (BOTs) to increase the ‘blue belt’ protecting BOTs’ waters from commercial extraction, from the current 32% of coverage to 50%.
  • Create a Nature GCSE to encourage children to value nature, and to grow a whole new generation of naturalists. We will also introduce an English Climate Emergency Education Act to support schools to teach young people about the urgency, severity and scientific basis of the climate and environmental crises, and to ensure youth voices are heard on climate issues.
  • Find more information here in our full manifesto

Tackling Discrimination

  • Establish a cross-government strategy tasked with tackling ethnic inequalities, ranging from school exclusions through to biased treatment in the criminal justice system, and covering housing, employment and health.
  • Replace ‘Prevent’ with community cohesive policing which engages rather than antagonises Black Minority Ethnic (BME) communities and addresses concerns about the use of stop and search powers
  • End the hostile environment which puts migrants, from the EU and further afield, at risk and increases racism and anti-immigrant sentiment. This will include ending indefinite detention, closing the immigration detention centres and ending the culture of abuse and violence that has prevailed in them. We will immediately suspend all deportation flights and allow refugees to live freely, with a right to work, whilst their applications are considered.
  • Bring forward a new humane immigration system with no minimum income rules for visas, full workplace rights for migrants, the right to work for asylum seekers and recourse to public support for migrants and asylum seekers who need it.
  • Develop and implement a UK-wide strategy to tackle gender-based violence, including domestic violence, rape and sexual abuse, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), and trafficking. This will include working with perpetrators to prevent them from continuing to abuse. We will also reverse cuts to legal aid to prevent survivors being forced to represent themselves against their abusers in court and introduce a new Domestic Abuse Bill, which enables prosecution of economic abuse.
  • Roll back the cuts to domestic violence support centres and women’s refuges, and increase funding to provide more safe and secure accommodation for women and their children.
  • Put funding for Rape Crisis Centre services on a sustainable footing so that every survivor of sexual assault or violence receives proper support. We will increase and ring fence the Rape Support Fund and ensure funds are provided via the Victim Surcharge.
  • Increase funding for areas of the NHS heavily relied on by Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Intersex, Queer and Asexual (LGBTIQA+) people, including trans healthcare, gender identity clinics, HIV treatment and mental health provision.
  • Properly fund training to support the delivery of comprehensive, age-appropriate Personal Health and Sexual Education (PHSE) lessons in schools covering all aspects of sex and relationships, with a focus on consent.
  • Introduce a legal right to independent living for disabled people, overseen by a National Independent Living Support Service. This service will support and empower disabled people who do choose to live independently.
  • Fully embed the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) into UK law. This will mean that the unacceptable practices of compulsory treatment, chemical and physical restraint, isolation, and seclusion are made illegal in the UK.
  • Find more information here in our full manifesto

Preventing Crime

  • Significantly reduce the number of short-term prison sentences handed out, replacing them with restorative justice projects that have a better record of preventing reoffending.
  • Enhance the rehabilitation services on offer to long-term prisoners, commissioning rehabilitation services that have a track record of success.
  • Invest in youth services and centres, to help turn at-risk children away from crime. All the evidence shows the cuts in youth services have increased crime, especially knife crime. To end knife crime once and for all we need to invest in specialist programmes provided through youth centres.
  • Integrate police forces more closely with the communities they serve by creating new community liaison and equality officers to work on positive relations and by putting more police on the beat.
  • Find more information here in our full manifesto

Ending The War On Drugs

  • Repeal the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016.
  • Invest in education and treat problematic drug use as a health issue, not a crime, building on the successful approaches pioneered in numerous other countries.
  • Replace the current system of prohibition with an evidence-based, legalised, regulated system of drug control. The production, import and supply of all drugs will be regulated according to the specific risks that they pose to the individual, to society and to the environment.
  • Set up an independent statutory body, the Advisory Council for Drug Safety, comprised of experts, who will be responsible for monitoring patterns of drug use, advising the government on changes to regulation and sourcing socially and ecologically sustainable supplies of opium and coca from the Global South.
  • Find more information here in our full manifesto

Transforming Our Relationship With Animals

  • Guarantee the principle of animal sentience. This will mean that that regard for the welfare needs of animals as sentient beings is uppermost in formulating and implementing relevant government policy.
  • Ban all hunting. This includes trail hunting, where dogs are used to track foxes who are then shot, and the commercial shooting of deer and game birds. Government subsidies, used to maintain artificial landscapes designed only for hunting (such as grouse moors) will be ended and the land rewilded where possible. Where necessary for ecological reasons, humane culling will be licensed by Natural England and carried out by trained professionals. We will also ban the use of lead ammunition and outlaw all forms of snaring.
  • End the badger cull, which has no evidence basis and has failed to effectively reduce Bovine TB. We will fund research into a sensitive test to enable cattle vaccination, as an essential, as well as humane, part of a meaningful strategy to control the spread of the disease. We will also invest in better farm bio-security and badger vaccination.
  • Find more information here in our full manifesto

The New Deal for Tax And Spend

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Simplifying Income Taxes

  • Merge Employees National Insurance, Capital Gains Tax, Inheritance Tax, Dividend Tax and Income Tax into a single Consolidated Income Tax. This closing of loopholes will bring in an estimated £20 billion extra per year into the public purse. It will mean that all income is treated the same way for tax purposes.
  • Tax income from investments/assets at the same level as the taxation of income from work, through the Consolidated Income Tax. This will end the injustice whereby people who work for their incomes are taxed more highly than those whose income is derived from wealth.
  • Abolish Council Tax and Business Rates, replacing them with an LVT. The LVT will also absorb National Non-domestic Rates, Stamp Duty on Land, Annual Tax on Enveloped Dwellings, Capital Gains Tax on land sales, Inheritance Tax on land and Income Tax on land for owner-occupiers. The new LVT will charge the landowner a proportion of the capital value of the land each year (estimated to be around 1.4% of current values).
  • Lift millions of renters and business tenants out of property taxes altogether, by shifting the burden of land taxation from land users to landowners. We will legislate to prevent landowners passing these tax costs back to renters and tenants.
  • Phase in the changes over ten years, with reliefs on offer. This will ensure that the vast majority of homeowners will face similar or lower levels of tax to that which they pay now.
  • Find more information here in our full manifesto

Making Big Business Pay Its Fair Share

  • Increase the rate of Corporation Tax to 24%, in line with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average. We will advocate public country-by-country reporting and consolidated Corporate Tax across the EU to prevent profit shifting.
  • Increase the Bank Asset Tax. This will counteract the huge levels of support previous governments have given the banking sector, through public protections, licenses and subsidies. We will also close a loophole in the Stamp Duty on Shares, by including share purchases of all values and new share issues within the Duty.
  • Establish HM Revenue & Customs as an independent agency of government, answerable to Parliament. This will remove the power of politicians to strike secret deals with powerful corporations and individuals.
  • Find more information here in our full manifesto

Supporting Small Business

  • Give small businesses access to lending at affordable rates, by helping to establish a network of regional mutual banks. These new banks will be created specifically to provide funding for locally led economic initiatives and opportunities, including co-operatives, community interest companies and other non-profit businesses.
  • Further free up funding by introducing credit guidance for traditional banks, requiring them to increase their lending to small businesses and businesses focussed on the sustainability transition.
  • Reduce VAT on food and drink served in pubs, bars and restaurants, on hotel bookings and on theatre, music concert and museum and gallery tickets, This will boost the leisure and cultural sectors, helping 125,000 businesses at the heart of their local communities.
  • Increase the Employment Allowance to £10,000 (currently just £3,000) per year, allowing small businesses which employ people to claim back the equivalent National Insurance of four full-time workers earning the average salary. This tax cut will benefit hundreds of thousands of small businesses, allowing them to hire more people, increase wages or reduce prices.
  • Find more information here in our full manifesto

Ending Wasteful Spending

  • Cancelling the Trident nuclear weapons system and nuclear powered submarines. We will join the United Nation’s Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and work within that multilateral framework work for the total elimination of all nuclear weapons, including the implementation, enforcement and verification of all disarmament, arms control and non-proliferation agreements.
  • Scrapping the government’s new road building programme, including the proposed road tunnel at Stonehenge that threatens to desecrate an iconic World Heritage Site. The funding for this road building programme, the £6.5 billion in revenue received from Vehicle Exercise Duty each year, will be switched to supporting sustainable public transport and new cycleways and footpaths as part of the Green New Deal. £1.5 billion of Vehicle Exercise Duty revenue will be retained to maintain existing roads.
  • Scrapping the doomed HS2 rail line. The funds freed up will be spent on more effective sustainable public transport options, as part of the Green New Deal. This will enable an increase in rail capacity in regions that desperately need more investment, including the creation of three electrified rail lines running from Liverpool and Manchester to Sheffield, Hull and the Tees Valley. These three newly electrified lines will run through Bradford and Leeds, creating new rail hubs in the heart of Yorkshire.
  • Find more information here in our full manifesto
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