Contents
1 Foreword 5
2 Our Fair Deal 7
3 The Economy 11
4 Business and Jobs 17
5 Climate Change and Energy 23
6 Health 29
7 Care 37
8 Education 41
9 Families, Children and Young People 47
10 Pensions and Safety Net 51
11 Crime and Policing 55
12 Natural Environment 61
13 Food and Farming 65
14 Housing 71
15 Communities and Local Government 75
16 Transport 79
17 Culture, Media and Sport 83
18 Immigration and Asylum 87
19 Rights and Equality 93
20 Political Reform 99
21 Defence 105
22 International 109
1 Foreword
This election is our chance to win the change our country desperately needs.
Everywhere I go across our great United Kingdom, I see people from all
backgrounds and all walks of life, working hard, raising families, helping others and
playing by the rules. But they have been let down and taken for granted for far too
long by this out-of-touch Conservative Government. Families and pensioners are
struggling with sky-high energy bills, food prices and housing costs - and the
Conservatives have only added to the pain, because they just don't care.
The Conservatives have plunged the NHS into crisis, failing to deliver the new
hospitals they promised and making people wait hours for an ambulance, weeks to
see a GP or months for urgent cancer treatment. They are letting water companies
get away with pumping filthy sewage into our rivers and lakes and onto our
beaches.
It's time for a change.
These Conservatives have got to go. And in so many parts of the country, we have
shown that it is the Liberal Democrats who can get them out.
But this election is about more than a change of government. We must transform
the very nature of British politics itself, so that we can fix the health and care crisis,
get our economy back on track, end the appalling sewage scandal, and give people
the fair deal they deserve.
Every vote for the Liberal Democrats is a vote to elect a strong local champion who
will fight for a fair deal for you and your community. A fair deal where everyone can
afford a decent home somewhere safe and clean - with a comfortable retirement
when the time comes. A fair deal where every child can go to a good school and
have real opportunities to fulfil their potential. A fair deal where everyone can get
the high-quality healthcare they need, when they need it and where they need it.
That is the fair deal the Liberal Democrats are fighting for. I know we can achieve it.
So join us, and let's make it happen!
Ed Davey
5
2 Our Fair Deal
In so many ways, things in our country are broken. The economy, the National
Health Service, the climate, the housing market - all are in crisis after years of
Conservative neglect. Schools are crumbling and clean rivers seem a thing of the
past. The Conservatives have wrecked our relationship with our nearest neighbours
in Europe, and our political system is simply not fit for purpose. Millions of people
feel powerless and excluded.
It doesn't have to be this way. Britain has overcome big challenges before and we
can do it again now.
For more than 150 years, Liberals and Liberal Democrats have led the fight for a
fair, free and open society: championing free trade, introducing the state pension
and free school meals, laying the foundations of the welfare state and the NHS,
legalising same-sex marriage, and taking urgent action to tackle the climate
emergency.
Today, our fair deal would give everyone the power to make the most of their
potential, and real freedom to decide how they live their lives. It would call the
over-powerful to account. It has five key themes.
1. A fair deal on the economy
Everyone deserves the chance to get on in life, see their hard work properly
rewarded and realise their hopes for the future. Businesses and entrepreneurs
should be supported to create worthwhile jobs in every part of the UK.
Liberal Democrats will invest in renewable power and home insulation to
drive a strong economic recovery, bring down energy bills and create clean,
secure, well-paid new jobs.
We will put people first, investing in more apprenticeships and new Lifelong Skills
Grants. We will overhaul parental leave to give families more choice and flexibility
over how to juggle work and home life. We will support entrepreneurs, back small
businesses, and reform business rates to help our high streets. We will make Britain
a world leader in the new infrastructure, businesses and technologies needed to
tackle climate change. We will manage the public finances with the utmost care and
responsibility. We will fix the UK's broken relationship with Europe and tear down
the Conservatives' damaging barriers to trade.
2. A fair deal on public services
Everyone should receive the care they need when they are ill or frail, and a helping
hand when they fall on tough times. A strong NHS - open to all, regardless of wealth
- gives people the freedom they need to live their lives as they choose. Every child
deserves the best possible start in life. We know that education is the best possible
investment in our country's future.
Liberal Democrats will give everyone a new right to see a GP within seven
days, or 24 hours if it's urgent, with the extra doctors needed to make it
happen.
We will invest in improving public health, expanding early access to health services,
and fixing social care. We will give every child the support they need with more
specialist teachers, free school meals for all children in poverty, and a dedicated
mental health professional in every school. We will repair the broken safety net that
currently consigns so many to poverty. We will restore community policing and
ensure that every burglary is properly investigated. And we will fund public services
through fair taxes, such as reversing the Conservatives' tax cuts for big banks.
3. A fair deal on the environment
Everyone should be able to enjoy the benefits of our wonderful natural
environment, and our children should inherit the future they deserve. We must act
now - locally, nationally and globally. The UK can lead the world with innovation and
ingenuity, while boosting the economy and enhancing everyone's quality of life.
Liberal Democrats will hold big companies to account by giving them a duty
to protect the environment, including banning water companies from
dumping raw sewage into rivers, lakes and coastal areas.
We will put tackling climate change at the heart of a new industrial strategy. We will
cut emissions and bills with an emergency Home Energy Upgrade programme. We
will drive a rooftop solar revolution and invest in clean energy, transport and
industry. We will restore nature and tackle toxic air pollution. And we will provide
skills training, incentives and advice to help families and businesses with the
transition to net zero.
4. A strong United Kingdom and a fair international order
Liberal Democrats are proud internationalists. We believe that our country and our
people thrive when we are open and outward-looking. The UK can be an incredible
force for good when it stands tall on the world stage, and both the Covid pandemic
and Vladimir Putin's illegal war in Ukraine show that events beyond Britain's borders
inevitably become our concern.
Liberal Democrats will immediately fix our broken relationship with Europe,
forge a new partnership built on cooperation, not confrontation, and move to
conclude a new comprehensive agreement that removes as many barriers to
trade as possible.
We will stand up to authoritarianism by championing the liberal, rules-based
international order. We will reverse the Conservatives' damaging cuts to the Army
and international development. We will work across borders to provide safe and
legal routes to sanctuary for refugees and tackle common threats such as human
trafficking, cybercrime and terrorism.
5. A truly fair democracy
Every person matters. Liberal Democrats believe that basic rights and dignity are
the birthright of every individual, to be respected, cherished and enhanced.
Everyone should have equal power in our democracy, and be able to hold all
Members of Parliament properly to account.
Liberal Democrats will introduce proportional representation for electing
MPs, and local councillors in England, and cap donations to political parties.
We will shift power out of the centre in Westminster and Whitehall, so local
decisions are made by and for the people and communities they affect. We will
demand higher standards of behaviour from Government Ministers by enshrining
the Ministerial Code in law. We will champion the UK's Human Rights Act and resist
any attempts to weaken or repeal it.
Our goal is to transform the nature of British politics itself - to make it relevant,
engaging and responsive to people's needs and dreams.
3 The Economy
Liberal Democrats will build a strong, fair economy that benefits everyone in the
UK, by helping people back to work, supporting small businesses, improving
long-term productivity, and delivering much greater stability for long-term
investment, especially for the industries of the future.
Core to our economic policy for improving stability and growth will be responsible
management of the public finances, fixing the broken trading relationship with
Europe, and an industrial strategy focused on the skills the future UK economy will
need, from the renewables industry to the digital and bioscience sectors.
The Conservatives have badly mismanaged the economy and recklessly damaged
the public finances, grinding economic growth to a halt and adding billions to the
cost of servicing our debt. Their botched Brexit deal has badly damaged the
economy, leaving everyone worse off. By abandoning climate commitments, they
have undermined industry's confidence in investment in the green products and
technologies vital to both economic recovery and tackling the climate emergency.
And they have taken people for granted, failing to deliver the investment needed
to bring prosperity to all nations and regions of the UK. They left families and
businesses to suffer the effects of their cost-of-living crisis without enough
support, hit people with years of unfair tax rises, such as the freeze on income tax
thresholds, and their promises to 'level up' have proved hollow.
We will empower people and support businesses to thrive by encouraging
investment and boosting productivity.
We will:
l Provide long-term help with the cost of living by cutting energy bills
through an emergency Home Energy Upgrade programme, tackling rising
food prices through a National Food Strategy, and getting mortgage rates
under control through careful economic management.
• Invest in green infrastructure, innovation and skills to boost economic
growth and create good jobs and prosperity in every nation and region of
the UK, while tackling the climate crisis.
• Repair the broken relationship with Europe, which acts as a brake on the
economy and costs the UK investment, jobs and tax revenue.
• Foster stability, certainty and confidence by managing the public finances
responsibly to get the national debt falling as a share of the economy and
ensure that day-to-day spending does not exceed the amount raised in
taxes, while making the investments our country needs.
• Put an end to Conservative waste and give taxpayers real value for money,
giving HMRC the resources it needs to properly tackle tax avoidance and
evasion.
• Implement a tax policy that recognises how high the Conservatives have
raised personal taxes, making the cost-of-living crisis worse, by instead
focusing tax changes on reversing the Conservatives' tax cuts for big banks
and imposing a proper, one-off windfall tax on the super-profits of oil and
gas producers and traders.
In addition, we will:
• Create good jobs and prosperity in every nation and region of the UK by:
• Launching an ambitious industrial strategy to incentivise businesses to invest
and create good jobs across the UK, as set out in chapter 4.
• Continuing to champion investment in the Northern Powerhouse, Western
Gateway and Midlands Engine.
• Supporting local and regional economic partnerships to coordinate
development projects and boost growth in their areas.
• Working with the devolved administrations to develop joint policies and
partnerships to boost growth across the whole UK.
• Ensuring that gigabit broadband is available to every home and business,
including in rural and remote communities, as set out in chapter 15.
• Foster the stability, certainty and confidence that are vital for economic growth
and investment by:
• Protecting the independence of the Bank of England and keeping the inflation
target of 2%.
• Ensuring that all fiscal events are accompanied by independent forecasts from
the Office for Budget Responsibility.
• Increase investment in green infrastructure, including renewable energy and
zero-carbon transport, industry and housing, as set out in chapters 4, 5, 14 and
16, and give a clearer zero-carbon remit to the UK Infrastructure Bank.
• Remain committed to delivering the United Nations Sustainable Development
Goals in the UK and around the world.
• Work with partners in international forums, including the OECD and the UN, to
tackle international corporate tax avoidance for the benefit of all countries and
make the case for increasing the global minimum rate of corporation tax to 21%.
• Our priority for tax cuts, when the public finances allow, will be to cut income tax
by raising the tax-free personal allowance, benefitting the vast majority of
families and taking more low-paid workers out of paying income tax altogether.
• Make the tax system fairer and raise the money needed for our investment
plans by:
• Reversing Conservative tax cuts for the big banks, restoring Bank Surcharge
and Bank Levy revenues to 2016 levels in real terms.
• Increasing the Digital Services Tax on social media firms and other tech giants
from 2% to 6%.
• Fairly reforming capital gains tax to close loopholes exploited by the super
wealthy.
• Introducing a 4% tax on the share buyback schemes of FTSE-100 listed
companies, to incentivise productive investment, job creation and economic
growth.
• End retrospective tax changes such as the loan charge brought in by the
Conservatives, and review the Government's off-payroll working IR35 reforms to
ensure self-employed people are treated fairly.
• Expand the British Business Bank to perform a more central role in the
economy, to ensure that viable small and medium-sized businesses have access
to capital, and enable it to help 'crowd-in' private investment, in particular in
zero-carbon products and technologies.
• Empower consumers and ensure that everyone can enjoy the benefits of new
technology, by setting a UK-wide target for digital literacy and requiring all
products to provide a short, clear version of their terms and conditions, setting
out the key facts as they relate to individuals' data and privacy.
• Introduce a national financial inclusion strategy and require both the Financial
Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority to have regard to
financial inclusion, such as protecting access to cash, especially in remote areas,
supporting banking hubs, expanding access to bank accounts, delivering
Sharia-compliant student finance and supporting vulnerable consumers.
4 Business and Jobs
We aim to make Britain one of the most attractive places in the world for
businesses to invest. Only in partnership with responsible, sustainable businesses
can we tackle the cost-of-living and climate crises, and create the wealth to invest
in healthcare, education and other essential public services.
Private enterprise is the principal engine of growth and prosperity in the UK. We
will support it by creating a stable business environment with smart regulation and
investing in skills, infrastructure, research and innovation. In return, we expect
businesses to commit to promote skills, equality and good governance, and to
support their local communities.
The Conservative Government has failed businesses and workers. Growth is
minimal, productivity is slipping, and constant U-turns have badly damaged
business confidence. Unfair tax hikes have further dented our prosperity, and our
town centres and high streets are crying out for a fair business rates system.
The Conservatives' botched deal with Europe has done enormous damage to
British businesses, putting up new barriers to trade and creating reams of red
tape. The UK has less clout in trade negotiations, the US is not interested, and the
new trade deals the Conservatives have signed will undercut high environmental
standards and hurt our farmers.
We will work in partnership with business to offer stability and ensure that we
maximise the opportunities for investment, growth and employment across the
country. We will make the UK a world leader in ethical, inclusive new technology,
including artificial intelligence, and a global centre for the development,
manufacture and export of clean technologies. And we will prioritise the depth
and quality of trade deals, ensuring they deliver benefits for the whole country.
We will:
• Develop an industrial strategy that will give businesses certainty and
incentivise them to invest in new technologies to grow the economy,
create good jobs and tackle the climate crisis.
• Unlock British businesses' global potential by bringing down trade barriers
and building stronger future relationships with our closest trading
partners, including by fixing our broken relationship with Europe as set
out in chapter 22.
• Fix the skills and recruitment crisis by investing in education and training,
including increasing the availability of apprenticeships and career advice
for young people.
• Boost productivity and empower more people to enter the job market
- such as parents, carers and disabled people - by making the most of
technology and new ways of working.
• Boost small businesses and empower them to create new local jobs,
including by abolishing business rates and replacing them with a
Commercial Landowner Levy to help our high streets.
• Introduce a general duty of care for the environment and human rights in
business operations and supply chains.
In addition, we will:
• Re-establish the Industrial Strategy Council and put it on a statutory footing, to
ensure vital oversight, monitoring and evaluation of the industrial strategy for
the long term.
• Support British industry to cut emissions while holding businesses to account
for their role in tackling climate change, as set out in chapter 5.
• Support science, research and innovation, particularly among small businesses
and startups, in universities and in zero-carbon, environmental and medical
technologies, including by:
• Continuing to participate in Horizon Europe and joining the European
Innovation Council.
• Aiming for at least 3% of GDP to be invested in research and development by
2030, rising to 3.5% by 2034.
• Ensure the UK has the highest possible standards of environmental, health,
labour and consumer protection, at least matching EU standards.
• Tackle the productivity crisis by encouraging businesses to invest in training, take
up digital technologies and become more energy efficient, including through our
industrial strategy and reform of business rates.
• Work with the major banks to fund the creation of a local banking sector
dedicated to meeting the needs of local small and medium-sized businesses.
• Power scale-up companies, especially outside of London and the South East,
using innovative ways of 'crowding-in' private sector investment.
• Create a clear, workable and well-resourced cross-sectoral regulatory framework
for artificial intelligence that:
• Promotes innovation while creating certainty for AI users, developers and
investors.
• Establishes transparency and accountability for AI systems in the public sector.
• Ensures the use of personal data and AI is unbiased, transparent and
accurate, and respects the privacy of innocent people.
• Negotiate the UK's participation in the Trade and Technology Council with the US
and the EU, so we can play a leading role in global AI regulation, and work with
international partners in agreeing common standards for AI risk and impact
assessment, testing, monitoring and audit.
• Unlock British businesses' global potential, bring down trade barriers and use
UK trade policy as a force for good by:
• Giving Parliament real power in setting UK trade policy, by ensuring it is
properly consulted on and signs off on negotiating mandates and any
completed international trade agreements.
• Ensuring that all information small and medium-sized enterprises need on
trade is readily available from a single point of contact, with tailored support
for those who need it.
• Making it a clear objective of trade ministers to boost trade by small British
businesses.
• Placing human rights, labour and environmental standards and protection at
the heart of international trade deals.
• Support our world-renowned whisky industry by reviewing the UK excise duty
structure to better support whisky exports.
• Cut resource use, waste and pollution by accelerating the transition to a more
circular economy that maximises the recovery, reuse, recycling and
remanufacturing of products. This will cut costs for consumers and businesses,
reduce exposure to volatile commodity prices, protect the environment and
create new jobs and enterprises.
• Promote a public benefit company model for monopoly utility companies.
• Encourage employers to promote employee ownership by giving staff in listed
companies with more than 250 employees a right to request shares, to be held
in trust for the benefit of employees.
• Reform fiduciary duty and company purpose rules to ensure that all large
companies have a formal statement of corporate purpose, including
considerations such as employee welfare, environmental standards, community
benefit and ethical practice, alongside benefit to shareholders, and that they
report formally on the wider impact of the business on society and the
environment.
• Extend the scope of the existing 'public interest' test when considering approvals
for takeovers of large or strategically significant companies by overseas-based
owners to recognise the benefits to the UK economy, workers and consumers of
protecting UK companies from speculative or short-term interests.
• Tackle the late payments crisis by requiring all government agencies and
contractors and companies with more than 250 employees to sign up to the
prompt payment code, making it enforceable.
• Invest in people's skills by:
• Replacing the broken apprenticeship levy with a broader and more flexible
skills and training levy.
• Boosting the take-up of apprenticeships, including by guaranteeing they are
paid at least the National Minimum Wage by scrapping the lower apprentice
rate.
• Creating new Lifelong Skills Grants for adults to spend on education and
training throughout their lives, as set out in chapter 8.
• Developing National Colleges as national centres of expertise for key sectors,
such as renewable energy, to deliver the high-level vocational skills that
businesses need.
• Identifying and seeking to solve skills gaps, such as the lack of advanced
technicians, by expanding higher vocational training like foundation degrees,
Higher National Diplomas, Higher National Certificates and Higher
Apprenticeships.
• Improving the quality of vocational education, and strengthening careers advice
and links with employers in schools and colleges, as set out in chapter 8.
• Fix the work visa system and expand the Youth Mobility Scheme, as set out in
chapter 18, to help address the labour shortages that are an outcome of the
Conservatives' botched deal with Europe.
• Establish a powerful new Worker Protection Enforcement Authority unifying
responsibilities currently spread across three agencies - including enforcing the
minimum wage, tackling modern slavery and protecting agency workers.
• Establish an independent review to recommend a genuine living wage across all
sectors, with government departments and all other public sector employers
taking a leading role in paying it.
• Modernise employment rights to make them fit for the age of the 'gig economy',
including by:
• Establishing a new 'dependent contractor' employment status in between
employment and self-employment, with entitlements to basic rights such as
minimum earnings levels, sick pay and holiday entitlement.
• Reviewing the tax and National Insurance status of employees, dependent
contractors and freelancers to ensure fair and comparable treatment.
• Setting a 20% higher minimum wage for people on zero-hour contracts at
times of normal demand to compensate them for the uncertainty of
fluctuating hours of work.
• Giving a right to request a fixed-hours contract after 12 months for 'zero
hours' and agency workers, not to be unreasonably refused.
• Reviewing rules concerning pensions so that those in the gig economy don't
lose out, and portability between roles is protected.
• Shifting the burden of proof in employment tribunals regarding employment
status from individual to employer.
• Expand parental leave and pay, including making them day-one rights, as set out
in chapter 9.
• Fix the broken Statutory Sick Pay system by:
• Making it available to the more than one million workers earning less than
£123 a week, most of whom are women.
• Aligning the rate with the National Minimum Wage.
• Making payments available from the first day of missing work rather than the
fourth.
• Supporting small employers with Statutory Sick Pay costs, consulting with
them on the best way to do this.
5 Climate Change and Energy
Climate change is an existential threat. Soaring temperatures leading to wildfires,
floods, droughts and rising sea levels are affecting millions of people directly, and
billions more through falling food production and rising prices. Urgent action is
needed - in the UK and around the world - to achieve net zero and avert
catastrophe.
At the same time, sky-high energy bills are hurting families and businesses, fuelling
the cost-of-living crisis. Russia's assault on Ukraine has reinforced the need to
significantly reduce the UK's dependence on fossil fuels and invest in renewables
- both to cut energy bills and to deliver energy security.
The Conservative Government has failed to act with anything close to the speed or
ambition these challenges demand. The independent Climate Change Committee
warns that the Government is not on track to meet its legally binding targets.
Liberal Democrats are committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions to net zero
by 2045 at the latest.
We will take the bold, urgent action needed to tackle climate change, cut energy
bills and create hundreds of thousands of secure, well-paid new jobs. Together
with innovative British businesses, we will make the UK the world leader in the
clean technologies of the future. We will help households meet the cost of the
transition to net zero and make sure everyone benefits from it, leaving no one
behind.
We will:
• Make homes warmer and cheaper to heat with a ten-year emergency
upgrade programme, starting with free insulation and heat pumps for
those on low incomes, and ensure that all new homes are zero-carbon.
• Drive a rooftop solar revolution by expanding incentives for households to
install solar panels, including a guaranteed fair price for electricity sold
back into the grid.
• Invest in renewable power so that 90% of the UK's electricity is generated
from renewables by 2030.
• Appoint a Chief Secretary for Sustainability in the Treasury to ensure that
the economy is sustainable, resource-efficient and zero-carbon, establish a
new Net Zero Delivery Authority to coordinate action across government
departments and work with devolved administrations, and hand more
powers and resources to local councils for local net zero strategies.
• Establish national and local citizens' assemblies to give people real
involvement in the decisions needed to tackle climate change.
• Restore the UK's role as a global leader on climate change, by returning
international development spending to 0.7% of national income, with
tackling climate change a key priority for development spending.
In addition, we will:
• Take the action needed now to achieve net zero by 2045, including:
• Meeting the UK's commitment under the Paris Agreement to reduce emissions
by at least 68% from 1990 levels by 2030.
• Requiring the National Infrastructure Commission to take fully into account the
environmental implications of all national infrastructure decisions.
• Putting tackling climate change at the heart of a new industrial strategy, as set
out in chapter 4.
• Investing in education and training to equip people with the skills needed for
the low-carbon economy of the future, as set out in chapters 4 and 8.
• Ensuring that nature-based solutions, including tree planting, form a critical
part of the UK's strategy to tackle climate change, as set out in chapter 12.
• Putting our farming and food system on an environmentally sustainable
footing, as set out in chapter 13.
• Making it cheaper and easier to switch to electric vehicles, restoring the
requirement that every new car and small van sold from 2030 is zero-
emission, investing in active travel and public transport, electrifying Britain's
railways, and reducing the climate impact of flying, as set out in chapter 16.
• Coordinating action across the UK by creating a Joint Climate Council of the
Nations, as set out in chapter 20.
• Cut energy bills and emissions, and end fuel poverty, by:
• Launching an emergency Home Energy Upgrade programme, with free
insulation and heat pumps for low-income households and a central role for
local authorities in delivering this programme.
• Providing incentives for installing heat pumps that cover the real costs.
• Immediately requiring all new homes and non-domestic buildings to be built
to a zero-carbon standard, including being fitted with solar panels, and
progressively increasing standards as technology improves.
• Reintroducing requirements for landlords to upgrade the energy efficiency of
their properties to EPC C or above by 2028.
• Introducing a new subsidised Energy-Saving Homes scheme, with pilots to find
the most effective combination of tax incentives, loans and grants, together
with advice and support.
• Introducing a social tariff for the most vulnerable to provide targeted energy
discounts for vulnerable households.
• Helping people with the cost of living and their energy bills by implementing a
proper, one-off windfall tax on the super-profits of oil and gas producers and
traders.
• Decoupling electricity prices from the wholesale gas price.
• Eliminating unfair regional differences in domestic energy bills.
• Accelerate the deployment of renewable power and deliver energy security by:
• Removing the Conservatives' unnecessary restrictions on new solar and wind
power, and supporting investment and innovation in tidal and wave power in
particular.
• Maintaining the ban on fracking and introducing a ban on new coal mines.
• Building the grid infrastructure required, facilitated by a strategic Land and Sea
Use Framework as set out in chapter 15.
• Implementing the UK's G7 pledge to end fossil fuel subsidies, while ensuring a
just transition that values the skills and experience of people working in the oil
and gas industry and provides good opportunities for them, and takes special
care of the regions and communities most affected.
• Investing in energy storage, including green hydrogen, pumped storage and
battery capability.
• Working together with our European neighbours to build a sustainable supply
chain for renewable energy technology.
• Building more electricity interconnectors between the UK and other countries
to guarantee security of supply, located carefully to avoid disruption to local
communities and minimise environmental damage.
• Support the expansion of community and decentralised energy, including:
• Empowering local authorities to develop local renewable electricity generation
and storage strategies.
• Giving small low-carbon generators the right to export their electricity to an
existing electricity supplier on fair terms.
• Requiring large energy suppliers to work with community schemes to sell the
power they generate to local customers.
• Reducing access costs for grid connections.
• Reforming the energy network to permit local energy grids.
• Guaranteeing that community benefit funds receive a fair share of the wealth
generated by local renewables infrastructure.
• Restore the UK's role as a global leader on climate change by:
• Restoring international development spending to 0.7% of national income,
with tackling climate change a key priority for development spending.
• Showing leadership on the Paris Agreement by meeting the UK's Nationally
Determined Contribution and arguing for greater global ambition.
• Working together with our European neighbours to tackle the climate
emergency, including by associating the UK Emissions Trading System with the
EU ETS.
• Continuing the UK's support for the UN Loss and Damage Fund for countries
particularly vulnerable to the impact of climate change, to ensure a just
transition for all.
• Pressing for all OECD countries to agree to end subsidies for foreign fossil fuel
projects.
• Hold businesses to account for their role in tackling climate change by:
• Introducing a general duty of care for the environment, as set out in chapter 4.
• Requiring all large companies listed on UK stock exchanges to set targets
consistent with achieving the net zero goal, and to report on their progress.
• Regulating financial services to encourage climate-friendly investments, including
requiring pension funds and managers to show that their portfolio investments
are consistent with the Paris Agreement, and creating new powers for regulators
to act if banks and other investors are not managing climate risks properly.
• Support British industry to cut emissions by:
• Setting out a clear and stable roadmap to net zero, repairing the damage done
by Conservative U-turns and giving businesses the confidence to invest.
• Expanding the market for climate-friendly products and services with steadily
higher criteria in public procurement policy.
• Implementing the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism for high-emission
products, protecting UK businesses from unfair competition.
• Reducing emissions from industrial processes by supporting carbon capture
and storage and new low-carbon processes for cement and steel production.
• Providing more advice to companies on cutting emissions, supporting the
development of regional industrial clusters for zero-carbon innovation and
increasing the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund.
6 Health
Good health gives people the freedom to live their lives as they choose. A thriving
economy needs a healthy population. Universal high-quality healthcare, free at the
point of use and accessible wherever and whenever it's needed, is therefore
essential for both individual freedom and national prosperity.
Our NHS used to be the envy of the world. But now, too many people can't access
the care they need. The Conservatives have plunged the NHS into crisis - as have
the SNP in Scotland and Labour in Wales. With more than a hundred thousand
staff vacancies in England alone, a crisis in staff retention, long waiting times,
missed targets and poor outcomes, patient safety is being pushed into the danger
zone.
Getting an appointment with a GP can take weeks and seeing an NHS dentist is
almost impossible. People are no longer confident that when they ring 999 an
ambulance will turn up in time. Millions are waiting for treatment, unable to work.
The frontline workers who were rightly applauded are now overworked and burnt
out.
Liberal Democrats believe that people should be in control of their own lives and
health and that means everyone should get the care they need, when they need it,
where they need it. Instead of just spending money firefighting crisis after crisis,
we will invest now to save taxpayers' money in the long-run. We will strengthen
patients' rights, fix crumbling hospitals, recruit and retain a workforce for the
future, invest in technology that improves outcomes and saves money, and
restore the UK as a world leader in health research.
Our plan will tackle the crisis at both the front door and the back door to the NHS:
investing in public health and early access to community services, including GPs,
pharmacists and dentists, so fewer people need to go to hospital in the first place,
and fixing the crisis in social care to stop so many people being stuck in hospital
beds. Liberal Democrats understand that we need to fix social care to save our
NHS.
We will:
• Give everyone the right to see a GP within seven days, or within 24 hours if
they urgently need to, with 8,000 more GPs to deliver on it.
• Guarantee access to an NHS dentist for everyone needing urgent and
emergency care, ending DIY dentistry and 'dental deserts'.
• Improve early access to mental health services by establishing mental
health hubs for young people in every community and introducing regular
mental health check-ups at key points in people's lives when they are most
vulnerable to mental ill-health.
• Boost cancer survival rates and introduce a guarantee for 100% of patients
to start treatment for cancer within 62 days from urgent referral.
• Help people to spend five more years of their life in good health by
investing in public health.
In addition, we will:
• Give everyone the right to see a GP or the most appropriate practice staff
member within seven days, or within 24 hours if they urgently need to, by:
• Increasing the number of full-time equivalent GPs by 8,000, half by boosting
recruitment and half from retaining more experienced GPs.
• Giving everyone 70+ and everyone with long-term health conditions access to
a named GP.
• Freeing up GPs' time by giving more prescribing rights and public health
advisory services to qualified pharmacists, nurse practitioners and
paramedics.
• Introducing a universal 24/7 GP booking system.
• Removing top-down bureaucracy to let practices hire the staff they need and
invest in training.
• Establishing a Strategic Small Surgeries Fund to sustain services in rural and
remote areas.
• Guarantee access to an NHS dentist for everyone needing urgent and
emergency care by:
• Bringing dentists back to the NHS from the private sector by fixing the broken
NHS dental contract and using flexible commissioning to meet patient needs.
• Introducing an emergency scheme to guarantee access to free NHS dental
check-ups for those already eligible: children, new mothers, those who are
pregnant and those on low incomes.
• Guaranteeing appointments for all those who need a dental check before
commencing surgery, chemotherapy or transplant.
• Take action to prevent tooth decay by:
• Providing supervised toothbrushing training for children in nurseries and
schools.
• Scrapping VAT on children's toothbrushes and toothpaste.
• Work towards a fairer and more sustainable long-term funding model for
pharmacies, and build on the Pharmacy First approach to give patients more
accessible routine services and ease the pressure on GPs.
• Improve early access to mental health services by:
• Opening walk-in hubs for children and young people in every community.
• Offering regular mental health check-ups at key points in people's lives when
they are most vulnerable to mental ill-health.
• Putting a dedicated, qualified mental health professional in every school, as set
out in chapter 8.
• Ending out-of-area mental health placements by increasing capacity and
coordination between services, so that no one is treated far from home.
• Extending young people's mental health services up to the age of 25 to end
the drop-off experienced by young people transitioning to adult services.
• Increasing access to clinically effective talking therapies.
• Taking an evidence-led approach to preventing and treating eating disorders,
and challenging damaging stigma about weight.
• Making prescriptions for people with chronic mental health conditions free on
the NHS, as part of our commitment to review the entire schedule of
exemptions for prescription charges.
• Transforming perinatal mental health support for those who are pregnant,
new mothers and those who have experienced miscarriage or stillbirth.
• Tackling stigma through continued support for public education including
Time to Talk.
• Cutting suicide rates with a focus on community suicide prevention services
and improving prevention training for frontline NHS staff.
• Recognising the relationship between mental health and debt, and providing
better signposting between talking therapies and debt advice.
• Ending inappropriate and costly inpatient placements for people with learning
disabilities and autism.
• Modernising the Mental Health Act to strengthen people's rights, give them
more choice and control over their treatment and prevent inappropriate
detentions.
• Creating a statutory, independent Mental Health Commissioner to represent
patients, their families and carers.
• Widening the current safety investigation into mental health hospitals to look
at the whole patient experience, including ward design and treatment options.
• Boost cancer survival rates by:
• Introducing a guarantee that 100% of patients will be able to start treatment
within 62 days from urgent referral.
• Replacing ageing radiotherapy machines and increasing their number, so no
one has to travel too far for treatment.
• Recruiting more cancer nurses so that every patient has a dedicated specialist
supporting them throughout their treatment.
• Passing a Cancer Survival Research Act requiring the Government to
coordinate and ensure funding for research into the cancers with the lowest
survival rates.
• Halving the time for new treatments to reach patients by expanding the
Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency's capacity.
• Launching a new prostate cancer screening programme for those at higher
risk.
• Help people spend more years of their life in good health by:
• Increasing the Public Health Grant, with a proportion of the extra funding set
aside for those experiencing the worst health inequalities to co-produce plans
for their communities.
• Establishing a 'Health Creation Unit' in the Cabinet Office to lead work across
government to improve the nation's health and tackle health inequalities.
• Introducing regulations to halt the dangerous use of vapes by children while
recognising their role in smoking cessation for adults, and banning the sale of
single-use vapes.
• Improving access to blood pressure tests in community spaces.
• Expanding social prescribing and investing in community projects that bring
people together to combat loneliness.
• Introducing a new kitemark for health apps and digital tools that are clinically
proven to help people lead healthier lives.
• Introducing a new levy on tobacco company profits to help fund healthcare
and smoking cessation services.
• Protecting children from exposure to junk food by supporting local authorities
to restrict outdoor advertising and restricting TV advertising to post-
watershed.
• Extending the soft drinks levy to juice-based and milk-based drinks that are
high in added sugar.
• Tackling air pollution and poor air quality in public buildings with a Clean Air
Act, as set out in chapter 12.
• Train, recruit and retain the doctors, nurses and other NHS staff we need,
including by:
• Establishing a properly independent pay review body.
• Retaining more staff across the NHS through a ten-year retention plan.
• Making flexible working a day-one right and expanding access to flexible,
affordable childcare, as set out in chapters 4 and 9.
• Fixing the work visa system and exempting NHS and care staff from the
Immigration Skills Charge, as set out in chapter 18.
• Ending the false economy of spending money on agency workers and
encouraging the use of flexible staff banks.
• Fix the life-threatening crisis in our ambulance services by:
• Ending excessive handover delays for ambulances by increasing the number
of staffed hospital beds to end degrading corridor care, and fixing social care
as set out in chapter 7.
• Publishing accessible, localised reports of ambulance response times.
• Creating an emergency fund to reverse closures of community ambulance
stations and cancel planned closures where needed.
• Implement a ten-year plan to invest in hospitals and the primary care estate to
end the scandal of crumbling roofs, dangerous concrete and life-expired
buildings.
• Create a new 'Patients Charter' to harness lived experience of patients and
embed patient voice, partnership and safety standards across health and care
settings, including:
• A new legal right to a second opinion.
• A new legal right to maintain contact in all health and care settings.
• Protecting patient data and patients' rights to opt out of data sharing.
• Implement the recommendations of the Infected Blood Inquiry in full, including
delivering full and fair compensation to all victims of the scandal in a timely and
transparent manner.
• Introduce truly independent complaints processes and transparent monitoring
of reports of sexual misconduct in the NHS.
• End the General Medical Council's five-year rule which prevents patients raising
complaints relating to matters more than five years old.
• Enable patients to leave hospital when they no longer need to be there by
investing in social care and community care, as set out in chapter 7.
• Develop and implement a post-pandemic strategy for supporting people who
are immunocompromised.
• Harness the benefits of new technology and digital tools for patients by:
• Ring-fencing budgets to enable the NHS to adopt innovative digital tools that
improve patient care and experience and save staff time and costs.
• Replacing old, slow computers to free up clinicians' time to care for patients.
• Requiring all IT systems used by the NHS to work with each other.
• Ensuring every care setting has electronic records that can feed into a
patient's health record with the patient's consent.
• Expanding virtual wards and investing in new technologies that free up staff
time and allow people to be treated at or closer to home.
• Review diagnostic provision across the NHS and implement a new ten-year
Strategic Diagnostics Plan.
• Improve faster access to new and novel medicines and medical devices by
seeking a comprehensive mutual recognition agreement with the European
Medicines Agency.
• Combat the harms caused by drugs by:
• Moving the departmental lead on drugs policy from the Home Office to the
Department of Health and Social Care.
• Investing in more addiction services and support for drug users, including
specialist youth support services.
• Freeing up police time, reducing court backlogs, tackling prison overcrowding
and reducing the harms of drug misuse by diverting people arrested for
possession of drugs for personal use into treatment where appropriate.
• Protecting young people, tackling the criminal gangs and taking 'skunk' off the
streets by introducing a legal, regulated market for cannabis. Sales will be
restricted to over-18s only, from licensed retailers with strict limits on potency
and THC content.
• Treating Scotland's drug deaths crisis as a public health emergency, and
devolving powers for tailored solutions where necessary.
• Provide a fair funding deal for hospices, including children's hospices,
recognising the valuable services they provide and saving money on hospital
admissions.
7 Care
Everyone deserves high-quality care when they need it. Liberal Democrats want
everyone to be able to live independently and with dignity, and receive any care
they need in their own home wherever possible.
Carers - paid and unpaid, young and old - do a remarkable and important job.
They deserve far more support, but are too often forgotten and ignored.
But social care services in this country are in crisis. Hundreds of thousands of
people are waiting for care. Many are stranded in hospital beds because the care
isn't in place for them to leave, putting even more strain on the NHS.
The Conservatives promised to "fix" the crisis in our social care system, that no one
would have to sell their house to pay for personal care costs, and that they would
not raise taxes to do it. They have broken all these promises.
We will empower care users, and support care workers and the millions of unpaid
carers looking after loved ones. We will forge a new consensus on funding to
ensure that no one has to sell their home to pay for their personal care. We will
invest to save, recognising that providing care reduces demand on more
expensive NHS services.
We will:
• Introduce free personal care based on the model introduced by the Liberal
Democrats in government in Scotland in 2002, so that provision is based
on need, not ability to pay.
• Create a social care workforce plan, establish a Royal College of Care
Workers to improve recognition and career progression, and introduce a
higher Carer's Minimum Wage.
• Establish a cross-party commission to forge a long-term agreement on
sustainable funding for social care.
• Give unpaid carers a fair deal so they get the support they so desperately
need, including paid carer's leave and a statutory guarantee of regular
respite breaks.
• Develop a digital strategy to enable care users to live tech-enabled lives.
In addition, we will:
• Provide truly personalised care that empowers individuals by:
• Trialling personal health and social care budgets so that individuals are in
control of what care they receive.
• Rolling out digital platforms for care users to develop networks, relationships
and opportunities, connecting with care workers, friends and family, voluntary
groups and more.
• Improving communication standards so carers can support care users to
co-produce and monitor care plans.
• Developing a digital strategy for tech-enabled lives.
• Establishing an Independent Living Taskforce to help people live
independently in their own homes, as set out in chapter 10.
• End the postcode lottery of service provision and provide national, high-quality
care for everyone who needs it by:
• Providing predictable, consistent funding for free personal care.
• Increasing transparency and accountability as to how money is spent through
local authorities.
• Creating a National Care Agency to set national minimum standards of care.
• Enabling individuals to transfer their care package so they don't feel stuck in
their current locality due to their care needs.
• Give unpaid carers a fair deal by:
• Increasing Carer's Allowance and expanding eligibility for it, as set out in
chapter 10.
• Introducing a statutory guarantee of regular respite breaks for unpaid carers.
• Introducing paid carer's leave, building on the entitlement to unpaid leave
secured by the Liberal Democrats.
• Making caring a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010 and
requiring employers to make reasonable adjustments to enable employees
with caring responsibilities to provide that care.
• Introducing a Young Carers Pupil Premium as part of an 'Education Guarantee'
for young carers.
• Make careers in social care more attractive and value experienced staff to
improve retention by:
• Creating a new Carer's Minimum Wage, boosting the minimum wage for care
workers by £2 an hour, as a starting point for improved pay across the sector.
• Creating clear career pathways, linked to recommended pay scales, which put
an end to the undervaluing of skills in the sector.
• Creating a career ladder to allow flexibility to work across the NHS and social
care, allowing staff to gain experience in both.
• Creating a Royal College of Care Workers to represent this skilled workforce.
• Expanding the NHS Digital Staff Passport to include the care sector.
• Recruit more staff to the sector with a social care workforce plan, akin to the
NHS England workforce plan, that includes ethical international recruitment.
• Support people to age well by:
• Establishing a Commissioner for Older People and Ageing.
• Rolling out active ageing programmes and trips and falls assessments for
everyone over the age of 75 to prevent falls, avoid unnecessary hospital
admissions and promote healthy ageing.
• Opening fracture liaison services so that osteoporosis patients can get the
treatment they need and prevent long-term issues and costs.
• Support children in kinship care and their family carers by:
• Introducing a statutory definition of kinship care.
• Building on the existing pilot to develop a weekly allowance for all kinship carers.
• Make care experience a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010 to
strengthen the rights of people who are in or have been in care.
• Refresh the national strategy for loneliness collaboratively with service providers
and people who have lived experience of loneliness, to be overseen by a
dedicated Minister for Tackling Loneliness.
8 Education
Liberal Democrats believe that education is the best investment we can make in
our children's potential and our country's future.
The Conservatives have consistently let down children and parents and neglected
schools and colleges. They have failed to grasp the scale of the damage that the
Covid pandemic has done to children's learning and mental health.
We will invest in education, starting in the crucial early years and continuing
throughout adulthood. We want every child to get the support and attention they
need at school, so they leave with the skills, confidence and resilience to be happy
and successful - whatever they choose to do next.
We will:
• Put a dedicated, qualified mental health professional in every primary and
secondary school, making sure all children and parents have someone
they can turn to for help, funded by increasing the Digital Services Tax on
social media firms and other tech giants.
• Increase school and college funding per pupil above the rate of inflation
every year, and end the scandal of crumbling school and college buildings
by investing in new buildings and clearing the backlog of repairs.
• Introduce a 'Tutoring Guarantee' for every disadvantaged pupil who needs
extra support.
• Invest in high-quality early years education and close the attainment gap
by giving disadvantaged children aged three and four an extra five free
hours a week and tripling the Early Years Pupil Premium to £1,000 a year.
• Reinstate maintenance grants for disadvantaged students immediately to
make sure that living costs are not a barrier to studying at university.
• Create new Lifelong Skills Grants, giving all adults £5,000 to spend on
education and training throughout their lives, and aim to increase them to
£10,000 in the future when the public finances allow.
In addition, we will:
• Tackle the crisis in teacher recruitment and retention by:
• Creating a teacher workforce strategy to ensure that every secondary school
child is taught by a specialist teacher in their subject.
• Reforming the School Teachers' Review Body to make it properly independent
of government and able to recommend fair pay rises for teachers, and fully
funding those rises every year.
• Funding teacher training properly so that all trainee posts in school are paid.
• Introducing a clear and properly funded programme of high-quality
professional development for all teachers, including training on effective
parental engagement.
• Urgently establish a standing commission to build a long-term consensus across
parties and teachers to broaden the curriculum and make qualifications at 16
and 18 fit for the 21st century. This will draw on best practice such as the
International Baccalaureate and ensure children learn core skills such as critical
thinking, verbal reasoning and creativity.
• Improve the quality of vocational education, including skills for entrepreneurship
and self-employment.
• Strengthen careers advice and links with employers in schools and colleges.
• Include arts subjects in the English Baccalaureate and give power to Ofsted to
monitor the curriculum so that schools continue to provide a rich curriculum
including subjects like art, music or drama.
• Expand provision of extracurricular activities, such as sport, music, drama,
debating and coding, starting with a new free entitlement for disadvantaged
children.
• Reform Ofsted inspections and end single-word judgements so that parents get
a clear picture of the true strengths and weaknesses of each school, and schools
get the guidance and support they need to improve.
• Implement a new parental engagement strategy, including a regular, published
parent survey and guidance for schools on providing accessible information to
parents on what their children are learning.
• Tackle persistent absence by setting up a register of children who are not in
school, and working to understand and remove underlying barriers to
attendance.
• Tackle the crisis in special educational needs provision, and help to end the
postcode lottery in provision, by:
• Giving local authorities extra funding to reduce the amount that schools pay
towards the cost of a child's Education, Health and Care Plan.
• Establishing a new National Body for SEND to fund support for children with
very high needs.
• Give local authorities with responsibility for education the powers and resources
to act as Strategic Education Authorities for their area, including responsibility
for places planning, exclusions, administering admissions including in-year
admissions, and SEND functions.
• Redirect capital funding for unnecessary new free schools to help clear the
backlog of school repairs.
• Tackle bullying in schools by promoting pastoral leadership in schools and
delivering high-quality relationships and sex education.
• When the public finances allow, give disadvantaged two-year-olds an extra five
free hours of early years education a week, as another step towards a universal,
full-time entitlement for all two- to four-year-olds.
• Introduce a Young People's Premium, extending Pupil Premium funding to
disadvantaged young people aged 16-18.
• Review further education funding, including the option of exempting colleges
from VAT.
• Support the education of children in care, extend Pupil Premium Plus funding to
children in kinship care, and guarantee any child taken into care a school place
within three weeks, if required to move schools.
• Safeguard the future of our world-leading universities and the wellbeing of every
student by:
• Supporting science, research and innovation in universities, including
continuing to participate in Horizon Europe and joining the European
Innovation Council, as set out in chapter 4.
• Giving higher education institutions a statutory duty of care for their students.
• Introducing a statutory Student Mental Health Charter and requiring
universities to make mental health services accessible to their students.
• Returning to the Erasmus Plus programme as an associated country, as set
out in chapter 9.
• Establishing a review of higher education finance in the next Parliament to
consider any necessary reforms in the light of the latest evidence of the
impact of the existing financing system on access, participation and quality,
and make sure there are no more retrospective raising of rates or selling-off of
loans to private companies.
• Reporting international student flows separately to estimates of long-term
migration.
• Ensuring that all universities work to widen participation by disadvantaged and
underrepresented groups across the sector, prioritising their work with
students in schools and colleges, and requiring every university to be
transparent about selection criteria.
9 Families, Children and
Young People
Every child deserves the best possible start in life and the opportunity to flourish,
no matter their background or personal circumstances. Protecting their rights and
wellbeing as children and ensuring they are properly nourished are top priorities.
Families come in all shapes and sizes, and parents should have the support and
flexibility to juggle work with parenting as they see fit.
Flexible, affordable childcare and early years education is a critical part of our
economic infrastructure and helps close the attainment gap between rich and
poor. It gives parents more choice over how to organise their lives and helps them
return to work if they want to. Lack of access to affordable childcare is a key driver
of the gender pay gap.
But affordable childcare is only part of the picture. We will also overhaul parental
leave to give parents a genuine choice over how to manage things in the first
months of their child's life.
We will:
• Extend free school meals to all children in poverty, with an ambition to
extend them to all primary school children when the public finances allow.
• Appoint a Cabinet Minister for Children and Young People.
• Give parents genuine flexibility and choice in the crucial early months by
doubling Statutory Maternity and Shared Parental Pay to £350 a week and
introducing an extra use-it-or-lose-it month for fathers and partners, paid
at 90% of earnings.
• Make all parental pay and leave day-one rights, and extend them to
self-employed parents.
• Expand opportunities for young people to study, teach and volunteer
abroad by returning to the Erasmus Plus programme as an associated
country.
In addition, we will:
• Protect and support the rights and wellbeing of every child by:
• Incorporating the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into UK law.
• Setting up an independent advocacy body for children's safety online.
• Addressing the underfunding and neglect of children's mental health services,
youth services and youth justice services.
• Tackling child poverty, as set out in chapter 10.
• Giving 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote, as set out in chapter 20.
• Ensure that all parents can access childcare that is flexible, affordable and
fair by:
• Reviewing the rates paid to providers for free hours to ensure they cover the
actual costs of delivering high-quality childcare and early years education.
• Developing a career strategy for nursery staff, including a training programme
with the majority of those working with children aged two to four to have a
relevant Early Years qualification or be working towards one.
• Including a specific emphasis on identifying and supporting children with
special educational needs and disabilities in the new training programme for
early years staff.
• Restore childminding as a valued part of the early years system by:
• Replacing the three different current registration processes with a single
childcare register.
• Commissioning a practitioner-led review to simplify regulation, reduce
administrative burdens and attract new childminders while maintaining high
standards.
• Give parents genuine flexibility and choice in the crucial early months by:
• Making all parental pay and leave day-one rights, including for adoptive
parents and kinship carers, and extending them to self-employed parents.
• Doubling Statutory Maternity and Shared Parental Pay to £350 a week.
• Increasing pay for paternity leave to 90% of earnings, with a cap for high earners.
• Introducing an extra use-it-or-lose-it month for fathers and partners, paid at
90% of earnings, with a cap for high earners.
• Requiring large employers to publish their parental leave and pay policies.
• Introducing a 'Toddler Top-Up': an enhanced rate of Child Benefit for one-year-
olds.
• In the longer term, when the public finances allow, our ambition is to give all
families (including self-employed parents, adoptive parents and kinship carers):
• Six weeks of use-it-or-lose-it leave for each parent, paid at 90% of earnings.
• 46 weeks of parental leave to share between themselves as they choose, paid
at double the current statutory rate.
• Introduce paid neonatal care leave.
• Support children in kinship care and their family carers, as set out in chapter 7.
• Provide free access to sign language lessons for parents and guardians of
d/Deaf children.
• Tackle the backlogs in the family courts that leave children and families waiting
nearly a year for cases to be resolved, by making the legal aid system simpler,
fairer and more generous as set out in chapter 19.
• Fully review and reform the Child Maintenance Service to ensure it works for all
children and parents, including removing the Collect and Pay charge for
receiving parents and ensuring that payments cannot be used as a form of
coercive control over domestic abuse survivors.
10 Pensions and Safety Net
The cost-of-living crisis has caused huge financial hardship across the country and
restricted the life chances of millions. The Government response has been a series
of patchy and short-term fixes.
Liberal Democrats believe that no one should fear for their future, struggle to put
food on the table, or worry about heating their home.
Our aim is to make the UK the best place in the world to work, raise children and
enjoy retirement by ensuring that proper support is in place for those who need it.
We will:
• Tackle child poverty by removing the two-child limit and the benefit cap.
• Set a target of ending deep poverty within a decade, and establish an
independent commission to recommend further annual increases in
Universal Credit to ensure that support covers life's essentials, such as
food and bills.
• Support pensioners by protecting the triple lock so that pensions always
rise in line with inflation, wages or 2.5% - whichever is highest.
• Ensure that women born in the 1950s are finally treated fairly and
properly compensated.
• Give unpaid carers the support they deserve by increasing Carer's
Allowance and expanding it to more carers, and stop pursuing carers for
old overpayments of Carer's Allowance.
In addition, we will:
• Repair the broken benefits safety net by:
• Reducing the wait for the first payment of Universal Credit from five weeks to
five days.
• Scrapping the bedroom tax.
• Replacing the sanctions regime with an incentive-based scheme to help
people into work.
• Ending the young parent penalty for under-25s by restoring the full rate of
Universal Credit for all parents regardless of age.
• Increase Carer's Allowance and expand eligibility for it by:
• Raising the amount carers can earn and introducing an earnings taper to end
the unfair cliff-edge.
• Reducing the number of hours' care per week required.
• Extending it to carers in full-time education.
• Reverse the Conservatives' cut to support payments for parents whose partners
have died.
• Establish an Independent Living Taskforce to help people live independently in
their own homes, with more choice and control over their lives.
• Make the benefits system work better for disabled people by:
• Giving disabled people and organisations representing them a stronger voice
in the design of benefits policies and processes.
• Bringing Work Capability Assessments in-house.
• Reforming Personal Independence Payment assessments to make the process
more transparent and stop unnecessary reassessments, and end the use of
informal assessments.
• Give everyone the chance to enjoy a decent retirement by:
• Developing measures to end the gender pension gap in private pensions and
ensure working-age carers can save properly for retirement.
• Improving the State Pension system by investing in helplines to ensure quicker
responses to queries and resolution of underpayments.
• Ending the scandal of lost top-up payments by overhauling the processing
system and providing proper receipts.
• Fix the broken Statutory Sick Pay system, as set out in chapter 4.
• Require pension funds and managers to show that their portfolio investments
are consistent with the Paris Agreement, as set out in chapter 5.
• Ensure that military compensation for illness or injury does not count towards
means testing for benefits, as set out in chapter 21.
11 Crime and Policing
Everyone deserves to feel safe in their own homes and communities. But for too
many people in the UK, that's simply not the reality today.
The Conservatives have talked tough on crime, but failed even to get the basics
right. Their unnecessary cuts and ineffective use of resources have contributed to
the rise in unsolved crimes as police forces are left overstretched and under-
resourced.
Serious violence is destroying too many young lives. Our communities are plagued
by burglaries, fraud and anti-social behaviour, and far too many criminals are
getting away with it. Violence against women and girls remains horrifically high.
Huge backlogs in the courts are denying victims the justice they deserve. Prisons
are in crisis: overcrowded, understaffed and failing to rehabilitate offenders.
Liberal Democrats will prevent crime and build communities where people can
truly feel safe, including by:
• Restoring proper community policing, where officers are visible, trusted
and focused on preventing and solving crimes - especially rape and other
violent crime.
• Creating a new statutory guarantee that all burglaries will be attended by
the police and properly investigated.
• Investing in the criminal justice system to tackle the backlog of court cases
and ensure swift justice.
• Breaking the cycle of reoffending by improving rehabilitation in prisons
and on release, and strengthening the supervision of offenders in the
community.
• Ensuring survivors of violence against women and girls are properly
supported in the criminal justice process, including through mandatory
training for police and prosecutors in understanding the impact of trauma
on survivors.
In addition, we will:
• Free up local officers' time to focus on their communities by:
• Creating a new Online Crime Agency to effectively tackle illegal content and
activity online, such as personal fraud, revenge porn and threats and
incitement to violence on social media.
• Properly resourcing the National Crime Agency to combat serious and
organised crime.
• Help rebuild public trust in policing by:
• Scrapping Police and Crime Commissioners and replacing them with local
Police Boards made up of councillors and representatives from relevant local
groups, while investing the savings in frontline policing.
• Requiring the Home Secretary, the Mayor of London and the Metropolitan
Police Commissioner to draw up an urgent plan to implement the
recommendations of the Baroness Casey Review and tackle sexism, racism
and homophobia, while encouraging other police forces to do so where
appropriate.
• Ending the disproportionate use of Stop and Search.
• Requiring all police forces to adopt ambitious targets for improving the
diversity of their workforce and make regular progress reports to Parliament.
• Improving access to restorative justice services.
• Introducing the Hillsborough Law: a statutory duty of candour on police
officers and all public officials, as set out in chapter 20.
• Address staffing shortages in police forces by:
• Urgently drawing up a national recruitment, training and retention strategy to
tackle the shortage of detectives.
• Ensuring fair pay rises for police officers by reforming the Police Remuneration
Review Body to make it properly independent of government.
• Ensure that survivors of domestic abuse are properly supported throughout the
criminal justice system by:
• Embedding domestic abuse specialists in every police force and 999 operator
assistance centre to ensure that reports from survivors are handled effectively
and sensitively.
• Addressing the delays in domestic abuse referrals from the police to the CPS
and subsequent decision making by the CPS, acknowledging the unique risk
these delays can pose to women's safety.
• Improve the police response to mental ill-health by:
• Introducing a target of one hour for handover of people suffering from mental
health crisis from police to mental health services.
• Ensuring that all forces have a mental health professional in the control room
at all times.
• Supporting the police to achieve adequate levels of training in mental health
response.
• Tackle the backlogs in the criminal courts and reduce the number of people in
prison on remand by:
• Setting a clear target of halving the time from offence to sentencing for all
criminals, and implementing a properly funded strategy across the criminal
justice system to achieve it.
• Implementing a new data strategy across the criminal justice system to ensure
that capacity meets demand, and to understand the needs of all users,
especially victims, vulnerable people and those from ethnic minority
backgrounds.
• Developing a workforce strategy to ensure there are enough criminal
barristers, judges and court staff.
• Improve transparency throughout the criminal justice process by enabling all
victims to request a transcript of court proceedings free of charge.
• Address youth violence and combat knife crime by:
• Adopting a public health approach to the epidemic of youth violence which
identifies and treats risk factors, rather than just focusing on the symptoms.
This means police, teachers, health professionals, youth workers and social
services all working closely together to prevent young people falling prey to
gangs and violence.
• Investing in youth services that are genuinely engaging and reach more young
people.
• Making youth diversion a statutory duty so that every part of the country has a
pre-charge diversion scheme for young people up to the age of 25, ensuring
better outcomes for young people and less strain on police resources.
• Combat the rise of fraud and scams by:
• Naming and shaming the banks with the worst records on preventing fraud
and reimbursing victims.
• Requiring banks to reimburse victims of automated push payment scams
unless there is clear evidence that they are at fault.
• Launching a high-profile public awareness campaign to help people spot,
avoid and report frauds and scams.
• Improve cooperation with our European neighbours on tackling cross-border
crime, such as human trafficking, the illegal drug trade, cybercrime and
terrorism, including by:
• Working with Europol and Eurojust to develop and implement a joint strategy
for dealing with cross-border threats, with the closest possible cooperation on
shared priorities.
• Restoring direct, real-time access for UK police to EU-wide data sharing
systems to identify and arrest traffickers, terrorists and other international
criminals.
• Tackle modern slavery and human trafficking by:
• Reversing the Conservatives' rollbacks of modern slavery protections.
• Establishing a powerful new Worker Protection Enforcement Authority to
protect people in precarious work, with proactive intelligence-led enforcement
of labour market standards and a firewall with immigration enforcement.
• Transferring responsibility for identifying modern slavery victims from the
Home Office to local safeguarding agencies.
• Creating a financial deterrent by establishing a civil remedy for survivors
seeking redress from their traffickers.
• Introduce new laws to crack down on puppy and kitten smuggling.
• Cut reoffending by:
• Ending prison overcrowding.
• Recruiting and retaining more prison officers.
• Improving the provision of training, education and work opportunities in
prisons.
• Establishing a Women's Justice Board and providing specialist training for all
staff in contact with women in the criminal justice system.
• Replacing Young Offender Institutions with Secure Schools and Secure
Children's Homes.
• Ensuring that every prison has a 'through the gate' mentorship programme.
• Introducing a National Resettlement Plan to improve the rehabilitation of
people leaving prison and cut reoffending.
• Improving and properly funding the supervision of offenders in the
community, with far greater coordination between the prison service,
probation service providers, the voluntary and private sectors and local
authorities, achieving savings in the high costs of reoffending.
12 Natural Environment
Protecting our precious natural environment lies at the heart of the Liberal
Democrat approach. Everyone should be able to enjoy open green spaces, clean
blue rivers and the beauty of Britain's coast.
The UK is facing a nature crisis. One in six species are threatened with extinction
from Britain. Air pollution claims tens of thousands of lives every year, and costs
the NHS billions. The Government's own Office for Environmental Protection has
rebuked the Conservatives for falling "far short" of the action needed. The
Conservatives are using Brexit as an opportunity to erode previously high
environmental standards.
Nowhere is the Conservatives' lack of care for the environment clearer than the
national sewage scandal. They are letting water company bosses get away with
paying themselves millions of pounds in bonuses while dumping millions of tonnes
of raw sewage into our rivers, lakes and coastal areas. Just one in seven of
England's rivers are in good ecological health, and every single one is below
chemical pollution standards.
Liberal Democrats have a bold plan to restore the UK's natural environment, and
give everyone access to a clean and healthy natural world.
We will:
• End the sewage scandal by transforming water companies into public
benefit companies, banning bonuses for water bosses until discharges and
leaks end, and replacing Ofwat with a tough new regulator with new
powers to prevent sewage dumps.
• Set meaningful and binding targets to stop the decline of our natural
environment and 'double nature' by 2050: doubling the size of the
Protected Area Network, doubling the area of most important wildlife
habitats, doubling the abundance of species and doubling woodland cover
by 2050.
• Plant at least 60 million trees a year, helping to restore woodland habitats,
increase the use of sustainable wood in construction, and reach net zero.
• Pass a Clean Air Act, based on World Health Organization guidelines,
enforced by a new Air Quality Agency.
• Strengthen the Office for Environmental Protection and provide more
funding to the Environment Agency and Natural England to help protect
our environment and enforce environmental laws.
In addition, we will:
• Tackle the national scandal of sewage-polluted rivers, waterways and beaches,
and make water companies work for people by:
• Introducing a Sewage Tax on water company profits.
• Enforcing existing laws to ensure that the storm overflows only function in
exceptional circumstances.
• Setting legally binding targets to prevent sewage dumping into bathing waters
and highly sensitive nature sites by 2030.
• Embracing nature-based solutions to tackle the problem of sewage dumping.
• Strengthening the powers of local authorities to monitor the health of our
rivers, lakes and coastlines, restore our natural environment and tackle climate
change.
• Introducing a 'blue corridor' programme for rivers, streams and lakes to
ensure clean and healthy water and setting new 'blue flag' standards.
• Improving the quantity and quality of bathing waters and sensitive nature sites
with more regular and robust testing of water quality.
• Giving local environmental groups a place on water companies' boards.
• Introducing a single social tariff for water bills to help eliminate water poverty
within the next Parliament.
• Implementing Schedule 3 of the Flood and Water Management Act to require
sustainable drainage systems in new developments.
• Mandating all water companies to publish accessible real-time data on any
sewage they dump.
• Ensure everyone has access to a healthy natural environment, regardless of
where they live, by:
• Significantly increasing the amount of accessible green space, including
protecting up to a million acres, completing the coastal path, exploring a 'right
to roam' for waterways and creating a new designation of National Nature
Parks.
• Passing a new Environmental Rights Act, recognising everyone's human right
to a healthy environment and guaranteeing access to environmental justice.
• Making sure that the UK has the highest environmental standards in the
world.
• Protecting at least 30% of land and sea areas by 2030 for nature's recovery.
• Working together with our European neighbours to tackle the nature crisis,
including applying to join the European Environment Agency.
• Hold businesses to account for their responsibility to the environment by:
• Introducing a general duty of care for the environment, as set out in chapter 4.
• Requiring large businesses to publish transition plans to become nature-
positive across their activities and supply chains.
• Introducing nature-related financial disclosure requirements for large
businesses.
• Make planning work for our natural environment and ensure that developers
pay their fair share by:
• Ensuring new developments result in significant net gain for biodiversity, with
up to a 100% net gain for large developments.
• Introducing a strategic Land and Sea Use Framework to effectively balance
competing demands on our land and oceans.
• Empowering Local Nature Recovery Strategies to identify a new Wild Belt for
nature's recovery.
• Create a nature-positive economy, tackle plastic pollution and waste, and get
Britain recycling by:
• Introducing a deposit return scheme for food and drink bottles and
containers, working with the devolved administrations to ensure consistency
across the UK, learning the lessons from the difficulties with the Scottish
scheme.
• Aiming for the complete elimination of non-recyclable single-use plastics
within three years and replacing them with affordable alternatives.
• Working to protect 30% of the world's oceans by 2030 through the UN High
Seas Treaty and finalising a Global Plastics Treaty to cut plastic pollution
worldwide.
• Setting an ambition of ending plastic waste exports by 2030.
• Ensure that nature-based solutions form a critical part of our strategy to tackle
climate change by:
• Restoring our peatlands as a carbon store, and banning the use of
horticultural peat and the routine burning of heather on peatlands.
• Protecting and enhancing our temperate rainforest.
• Creating and restoring habitats like saltmarshes, mudflats and seagrass
meadows to guard against coastal flooding and erosion and absorb carbon
emissions.
• Tackling 'greenwashing' by introducing new Blue Carbon and Soils Carbon
Standards that are properly enforced and accredited.
• Working with international partners to fight deforestation around the world.
• Creating a real network of marine protected areas, ensuring that they are fully
protected from damaging and destructive activities, protecting and restoring
blue carbon and ensuring climate resilience at sea.
13 Food and Farming
The UK's food system is failing to serve the interests of citizens, whether they are
farmers or consumers.
Too many families simply can't afford enough healthy, nutritious food. Ultra-
processed foods, high in saturated fat, sugar and salt, are usually much cheaper
than healthier foods - contributing to serious health problems, especially among
poorer households.
Farmers are key allies in tackling climate change and the nature crisis, caring for
and restoring the countryside while producing high-quality food for our tables. But
their ability to do this is threatened by the Conservative Government's botched
transition away from the Basic Payment Scheme. We support the move to public
money for public goods, but many farmers are seeing their incomes threatened as
old payments are cut and new payments are not fully rolled out or properly
funded.
Meanwhile, farmers have had to contend with increases in bills for energy,
fertilisers and feed. It is hardly surprising we have seen food shortages in the
supermarkets.
The Conservatives' botched deal with the EU is also contributing to food shortages
and high food prices, and severely damaging farmers' and fishers' ability to export
to their main markets in Europe, while new trade deals undermine animal welfare
and environmental protection, undercutting responsible British farmers and
setting a dangerous precedent for future deals.
Liberal Democrats will stand up for British farmers and ensure everyone can get
affordable, healthy and nutritious food, produced to high welfare and
environmental standards.
We will:
• Introduce a holistic and comprehensive National Food Strategy to ensure
food security, tackle rising food prices, end food poverty and improve
health and nutrition.
• Accelerate the rollout of the new Environmental Land Management
schemes, properly funding it with an extra £1 billion a year to support
profitable, sustainable and nature-friendly farming.
• Maintain high health, environmental and animal welfare standards in food
production and guarantee that all future trade deals will meet them too,
ensuring that Britain's farmers and food manufacturers are not put at an
unfair disadvantage.
• Give Britain's farmers the ability to trade with our European neighbours
with minimal need for checks by negotiating comprehensive veterinary
and plant health agreements.
• Support farmers properly in restoring woodland, peatland and waterways,
creating new natural flood protections and managing land to encourage
species recovery and carbon storage, while producing food for the table.
In addition, we will:
• Give farmers and fishers a fair deal by:
• Introducing a range of other 'public money for public goods' programmes,
such as nature recovery, planting trees and protecting wildlife, contingent on
farmers and land managers opting into an Environmental Land Management
scheme.
• Exploring additional funding options to ensure an intelligent transition to
better farming practices.
• Investing in rural and coastal infrastructure and services, including local
abattoirs, so that communities are viable and can attract and retain workers,
particularly from younger age groups.
• Using public procurement policy to support the consumption of food
produced to high standards of environmental and social sustainability, and
which is nutritious, healthy and locally and seasonally sourced.
• Renegotiating the Australia and New Zealand trade agreements in line with
our objectives for health, environmental and animal welfare standards,
withdrawing from them if that cannot be achieved.
• Ensuring that sustainability lies at the heart of fisheries policy, rebuilding
depleted fish stocks to achieve their former abundance, including a ban on
bottom trawling in marine protected areas. Fishers, scientists and
conservationists should all be at the centre of a decentralised and regionalised
fisheries management system.
• Strengthen the Groceries Code Adjudicator to protect consumers from unfair
price rises and support producers.
• Ensure our farming and food system is on an environmentally sustainable
footing by:
• Ensuring farmers receive proper, independent advice about how to transition
to new environmental farm payments schemes, with proper funding for advice
services.
• Supporting farmers to reduce the pollution of rivers, streams and lakes.
• Working with and rewarding farmers to reduce the use of costly imported and
environmentally harmful artificial fertilisers and pesticides, helping to protect
bees and other pollinators.
• Introducing a Research and Innovation Fund to support new and emerging
technologies in the sector including the development of alternative proteins in
which the UK can become a world leader.
• Give consumers confidence in the food they eat by:
• Providing local authorities with greater powers and resources to inspect and
monitor food production.
• Ensuring all imported food meets UK standards for health and welfare, and
that goods are properly checked.
• Introducing robust and clear-to-understand food labelling.
• Ensure Britain continues to be a world leader in animal welfare and standards
by:
• Passing a comprehensive new Animal Welfare Bill to ensure the highest
standards possible.
• Ensuring that no animal product that would be illegal to produce in the UK can
be sold here, including foie gras and food produced with antibiotic growth
promoters.
• Developing safe, effective, humane, and evidence-based ways of controlling
bovine tuberculosis, including by investing to produce workable vaccines.
• Improving standards of animal health and welfare in agriculture, including a
ban on caged hens, and preventing unnecessarily painful practices in farming.
• At least matching the EU's stricter rules on preventative use of antibiotics, and
introducing a comprehensive plan to tackle antimicrobial resistance in farm
animals.
14 Housing
Liberal Democrats know that a home is a necessity and the base on which people
build their lives. So we will ensure that everyone can access housing that meets
their needs.
Yet, in Britain today, many people cannot afford to buy or rent a home of good
quality where they live. Too many people live in housing so poor it damages their
health.
Government housebuilding targets are regularly missed and the shortage of
affordable and social housing is at crisis point. Newly built homes are often energy
inefficient and environmentally unfriendly. Too many new houses are built as
leasehold and leaseholders still face large bills, not least because of the building
safety scandal. Homelessness remains shamefully high. Local authorities' powers
to build the kind of homes needed in their areas are inadequate.
Liberal Democrats are committed to tackling these housing failures head-on by:
• Increasing building of new homes to 380,000 a year across the UK,
including 150,000 social homes a year, through new garden cities and
community-led development of cities and towns.
• Delivering a fair deal for renters by immediately banning no-fault
evictions, making three-year tenancies the default, and creating a national
register of licensed landlords.
• Giving local authorities, including National Park Authorities, the powers to
end Right to Buy in their areas.
• Ending rough sleeping within the next Parliament and immediately
scrapping the archaic Vagrancy Act.
• Abolishing residential leaseholds and capping ground rents to a nominal
fee, so that everyone has control over their property.
In addition, we will:
• Build the homes people desperately need, with meaningful community
engagement, by:
• Expanding Neighbourhood Planning across England.
• Building ten new garden cities.
• Allowing councils to buy land for housing based on current use value rather
than on a hope-value basis by reforming the Land Compensation Act 1961.
• Properly funding local planning departments to improve planning outcomes
and ensure housing is not built in areas of high flood risk without adequate
mitigation, by allowing local authorities to set their own fees.
• Encouraging the use of rural exception sites to expand rural housing.
• Trialling Community Land Auctions to ensure that local communities receive a
fair share of the benefits of new development in their areas and to help fund
vital local services.
• Encouraging development of existing brownfield sites with financial incentives
and ensuring that affordable and social housing is included in these projects.
• Introducing 'use-it-or-lose-it' planning permission for developers who refuse to
build.
• Putting the construction sector on a sustainable footing by investing in skills,
training and new technologies such as modern methods of construction.
• Ensure that all development has appropriate infrastructure, services and
amenities in place, integrating infrastructure and public service delivery into the
planning process.
• Make homes warmer and cheaper to heat with a ten-year emergency upgrade
programme, and ensure that all new homes are zero-carbon, as set out in
chapter 5.
• Remove dangerous cladding from all buildings, while ensuring that leaseholders
do not have to pay a penny towards it.
• Help people who cannot afford a deposit to own their own homes by
introducing a new Rent to Own model for social housing where rent payments
give tenants an increasing stake in the property, owning it outright after 30
years.
• End rough sleeping within the next Parliament by:
• Urgently publishing a cross-Whitehall plan to end all forms of homelessness.
• Exempting groups of homeless people, and those at risk of homelessness,
from the Shared Accommodation Rate.
• Introducing a 'somewhere safe to stay' legal duty to ensure that everyone who
is at risk of sleeping rough is provided with emergency accommodation and an
assessment of their needs.
• Ensuring sufficient financial resources for local authorities to deliver the
Homelessness Reduction Act and provide accommodation for survivors of
domestic abuse.
• Give local authorities new powers to control second homes and short-term lets
in their areas, as set out in chapter 15.
• Protect the rights of social renters by:
• Proactively enforcing clear standards for homes that are socially rented,
including strict time limits for repairs.
• Fully recognising tenant panels so that renters have a voice in landlord
governance.
15 Communities and Local
Government
People want to live in flourishing communities. No community can flourish without
powers and resources.
Liberal Democrats are committed to allowing communities to take the action they
need to improve their areas. We believe, for example, that given sufficient powers
and resources local authorities can play a major role in combating the climate and
nature emergencies, whether by insulating homes or improving air quality.
Yet this Government is robbing local communities of their powers and their
resources. The Conservatives have forced councils to do more and more with less
and less, plunging many into financial crisis. In rural areas, the growth of second
homes, the lack of public transport and poor broadband connectivity are
undermining the viability of our communities.
Liberal Democrats will support local government through these difficult times, and
review the burdens and costs that councils have shouldered as a result of
Conservative Government policies. This includes tackling the social care funding
crisis, giving councils the freedom to set planning fees to reflect the actual cost of
delivering an efficient planning service, and building more homes to relieve the
soaring demand for temporary accommodation.
We will:
• Tackle the funding crisis facing local authorities, including by providing
multi-year settlements, boosting the supply of social housing, and forging
a long-term, cross-party agreement on social care.
• Give communities more control over the number of second homes and
short-term lets in their areas.
• Ensure local authorities have the powers and resources they need to
tackle the climate and nature emergencies, as set out in chapters 5 and 12.
• Ensure that gigabit broadband is available to every home and business,
including in rural and remote communities, and support local bespoke
solutions so that no property is left out.
• End the top-down reorganisation of councils and the imposition of elected
mayors on communities who do not want them.
• Work with communities to tackle the alarming rise of antisemitism and
Islamophobia.
In addition, we will:
• Decentralise decision-making from Whitehall and Westminster by inviting local
areas to take control of the services that matter to them most.
• Strengthen local democracy as set out in chapter 20, including introducing
proportional representation for electing councillors in England and scrapping
the Conservatives' voter ID scheme.
• Appoint a cross-departmental Minister for Rural Communities, to make sure that
rural voices are heard across government.
• Give local authorities new powers to control second homes and short-term lets
in their areas by:
• Allowing them to increase council tax by up to 500% where homes are being
bought as second homes, with a stamp duty surcharge on overseas residents
purchasing such properties.
• Creating a new planning class for these properties.
• Encourage post offices to become community banking and government hubs,
and keep DVLA services available at post office counters.
• Enhance powers over community assets to help local authorities protect pubs,
community farms, and other vital infrastructure.
• Invest in leisure centres, swimming pools and other grassroots facilities, and
support community sports clubs, as set out in chapter 17.
• Establish a Strategic Small Surgeries Fund to sustain GP services in rural and
remote areas, as set out in chapter 6.
• Properly fund local planning departments and give local authorities the powers
to end Right to Buy in their areas, as set out in chapter 14.
• Give local authorities the powers they need to restore bus routes and add new
ones where there is local need, especially in rural areas, as set out in chapter 16.
• Help motorists in rural areas who face higher fuel costs by expanding Rural Fuel
Duty Relief.
• Introduce a strategic Land and Sea Use Framework to effectively balance
competing demands.
16 Transport
Everyone should have convenient, affordable options to get around - whether to
get to work or the shops, to go to school or hospital, to visit friends and families or
to access other services. A safe, reliable transport system is vital for economic
prosperity in all parts of the country. And improving transport is essential to
combat climate change and air pollution.
Conservative Ministers have badly neglected our transport infrastructure. Their
chaotic U-turns have seriously undermined the rail industry, electric vehicle
manufacturing and regional development. They have failed to rollout electric
charging points at anything like the speed necessary, and they have left local bus
routes in rapid decline. Roads are in a terrible state, with potholes everywhere.
By investing in electric vehicles and clean public transport, as well as encouraging
walking and cycling, Liberal Democrats will enhance local, regional and national
connectivity while boosting the economy, protecting the environment and
improving public health.
We will:
• Make it cheaper and easier for drivers to switch to electric vehicles by
rapidly rolling out far more charging points, reintroducing the plug-in car
grant, and restoring the requirement that every new car and small van
sold from 2030 is zero-emission.
• Freeze rail fares and simplify ticketing on public transport to ensure
regular users are paying fair and affordable prices.
• Significantly extend the electrification of Britain's rail network, improve
stations, greatly improve disabled access, reopen smaller stations and
deliver Northern Powerhouse rail.
• Boost bus services by giving local authorities more powers to franchise
services and simplifying funding, so that bus routes can be restored or
new routes added where there is local need, especially in rural areas.
• Transform how people travel by creating new cycling and walking
networks with a new nationwide active travel strategy.
• Give more of the roads budget to local councils to maintain existing roads,
pavements and cycleways, including repairing potholes.
• Invest in research and development to make the UK the world leader in
zero-carbon flight, and take steps to reduce demand for flying.
In addition, we will:
• Make it easy and cheap to charge electric vehicles by:
• Rolling out far more charging points, including residential on-street points and
ultra-fast chargers at service stations.
• Supporting new charging points with an upgraded National Grid and a step-
change in local grid capacity.
• Cutting VAT on public charging to 5%.
• Requiring all charging points to be accessible with a bank card.
• Protect motorists from rip-offs, including unfair insurance and petrol prices.
• Boost bus services by:
• Supporting rural bus services and encouraging alternatives to conventional
bus services where they are not viable, such as on-demand services.
• Maintaining the £2 cap on bus fares while fares are reviewed.
• Replacing multiple funding streams with one integrated fund for local
authorities for expanding bus services and switching to zero-emission vehicles.
• Extending current programmes to encourage local authorities and bus
operators to switch entirely to zero-emission buses.
• Make rail a genuinely convenient, affordable and environmentally-friendly option
for both passengers and freight by:
• Urgently establishing a new Railway Agency: a public body which would help to
join up the industry - from track to train - putting commuters first, holding
train companies to account, and bringing in wholesale reform of the broken
fare system.
• Being far more proactive in sanctioning and ultimately sacking train operators
if they fail to provide a high-quality public service to their customers.
• Exploring the introduction of an annual pass for all railways.
• Improving accessibility at stations through the Access for All programme.
• Delivering Northern Powerhouse Rail to connect cities across the North of
England.
• Reviewing the Conservatives' cancellation of the northern leg of HS2 to see if it
can still be delivered in a way that provides value for money, including by
encouraging private investment, or if an alternative is viable.
• Working with local authorities to implement light rail schemes for trams and
tram-trains where these are appropriate solutions to public transport
requirements.
• Establishing a ten-year plan for rail electrification to increase the number of
passenger journeys covered by electric trains, investing in other zero-carbon
technologies including batteries, and ensuring all new rail lines are electrified
as standard.
• Introducing a national freight strategy to move as much freight as possible
from road to rail, supported by a freight growth target and electrification of
freight routes.
• Introducing an international rail strategy to support new routes and operators,
and permitting other operators to use the Channel Tunnel and HS1.
• Make public transport more affordable for young people by:
• Extending half-fares on buses, trams and trains to 18-year-olds.
• Working with operators to introduce a 'Young Person's Buscard', similar to the
Young Person's Railcard, giving 19- to 25-year-olds a third off bus and tram
fares.
• Reduce the climate impact of flying by:
• Reforming the taxation of international flights to focus on those who fly the
most, while reducing costs for ordinary households who take one or two
international return flights per year.
• Introducing a new super tax on private jet flights, and removing the VAT
exemptions for private, first-class and business-class flights.
• Requiring airlines to show the carbon emissions for domestic flights compared
to the equivalent rail option at booking.
• Banning short domestic flights where a direct rail option taking less than 2.5
hours is available for the same journey, unless planes are alternative-fuelled.
• Placing a moratorium on net airport expansion until a national capacity and
emissions management framework is in place, and opposing the expansion of
Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton, Stansted or London City airports and any new
airport in the Thames Estuary.
• Devolve greater decision-making powers and resources to local authorities in
England to design public transport infrastructure around community needs,
including powers to introduce network-wide ticketing as in London.
• Work to integrate bus, rail and light rail ticketing systems so that a daily fare cap
can be introduced for those taking several trips per day.
17 Culture, Media and Sport
The UK's rich and vibrant cultural heritage is a national treasure. Our creative and
tourism industries contribute billions of pounds to our economy and employ
millions of people. Art, music, drama and sports bring people together. They are
an essential part of a thriving society.
The Covid pandemic hit culture and tourism businesses extremely hard. And
instead of helping, the Conservatives have only inflicted even more damage. They
have downgraded the status of arts subjects at school, slashed funding for them
at university, and erected new barriers to British musicians and actors performing
elsewhere in Europe following our withdrawal from the EU.
Liberal Democrats will invest in our cultural capital and nurture the next
generation of talent. We will support the creative and tourism industries across
the UK so that businesses can thrive and people everywhere can enjoy the
benefits of sports, music and the arts.
We will:
• Protect the BBC, S4C, BBC Alba and Channel 4 as independent, publicly
owned, public service broadcasters.
• Promote creative skills, address the barriers to finance faced by small
businesses, and support modern and flexible patent, copyright and
licensing rules.
• Negotiate free and simple short-term travel arrangements for UK artists to
perform in the EU, and European artists to perform in the UK.
• Boost participation in sports and physical activity by investing in leisure
centres, swimming pools and other grassroots facilities and supporting
community sports clubs.
In addition, we will:
• Establish creative enterprise zones to grow and regenerate the cultural output
of areas across the UK.
• Upgrade the status of tourism in government with a dedicated Minister of State
for Tourism and Hospitality.
• Maintain free access to national museums and galleries.
• Boost funding for cultural and creative projects by applying to participate fully in
Creative Europe.
• Require at least 80% of on-demand TV content to be subtitled, 10% audio-
described and 5% signed.
• Support independent, Leveson-compliant regulation to ensure privacy, quality,
diversity and choice in both print and online media, and proceed with Part Two
of the Leveson Inquiry.
• Pass a comprehensive 'Anti-SLAPP Law' to provide robust protection for free
speech, whistleblowers and media scrutiny against Strategic Lawsuits Against
Public Participation.
• Support the BBC both to provide impartial news and information, and to take a
leading role in increasing media literacy and educating all generations in tackling
the impact of fake news.
• Protect fans from being exploited by ticket touts by implementing the
Competition and Markets Authority's recommendations to crack down on illegal
ticket resale.
• Protect sports and arts funding via the National Lottery.
• Combat the harms caused by problem gambling by:
• Introducing the planned compulsory levy on gambling companies to fund
research, prevention and treatment.
• Restricting gambling advertising.
• Establishing a Gambling Ombudsman to redress wrongs.
• Implementing effective affordability checks.
• Taking tough action against black market gambling.
• Ensure a sustainable future for football clubs and give fans a stronger voice by:
• Establishing the promised new independent regulator, placing it on a statutory
footing, and giving it the power to impose a fairer financial flow that rewards
well-run clubs.
• Strengthening the propriety test for prospective owners and directors by
including human rights questions.
• Requiring all clubs to have equality, diversity and inclusion action plans.
• Expand the list of sporting fixtures which must have live free-to-air coverage to
include more football matches as well as key international cricket, rugby, golf
and tennis fixtures.
• Support and encourage campaigns to improve equality, diversity and inclusion in
sport.
18 Immigration and Asylum
The UK has a proud history of welcoming newcomers - whether people seeking to
build their lives here, or refugees fleeing war and persecution. People from all over
the world have greatly enriched our economy, our culture and our communities.
But our immigration system has been broken by the Conservatives. Their
damaging new rules mean British employers can't recruit the people they need
and families are separated by unfair, complex visa requirements. Their dysfunction
has made the asylum backlog soar. Public confidence in the system is shattered.
The Home Office is not fit for purpose.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives have closed down safe and legal routes to
sanctuary, leaving desperate people to make perilous attempts to cross the
Channel in small boats - often in the hands of criminal smugglers and traffickers.
Liberal Democrats are fighting for a fair, effective immigration system that treats
everyone with dignity and respect.
We will:
• End the Conservatives' Hostile Environment and invest instead in officers,
training and technology to tackle smuggling, trafficking and modern
slavery.
• Transfer policy-making over work visas and overseas students out of the
Home Office and into other departments.
• Scrap the Conservatives' Illegal Migration Act and their Rwanda scheme,
uphold the Refugee Convention, and provide safe and legal routes to
sanctuary for refugees, helping to prevent dangerous Channel crossings.
• Tackle the asylum backlog by establishing a dedicated unit to improve the
speed and quality of asylum decision-making, introducing a service
standard of three months for all but the most complex asylum claims to be
processed, and speeding up returns of those without a right to stay.
• Lift the ban on asylum seekers working if they have been waiting for a
decision for more than three months, enabling them to support
themselves, integrate in their communities and contribute to the
economy.
• Work closely with Europol and the French authorities to stop the
smuggling and trafficking gangs behind dangerous Channel crossings.
In addition, we will:
• Replace the Conservatives' arbitrary salary threshold with a more flexible
merit-based system for work visas, with the relevant department working with
employers in each sector to address specific needs as part of a long-term
workforce strategy that also focuses on education and training to address skills
gaps from within the UK.
• Exempt NHS and care staff from the £1,000-a-year Immigration Skills Charge,
and reverse the Conservatives' ban on care workers bringing partners and
children.
• Expand the Youth Mobility Scheme by:
• Negotiating with the EU to extend it on a reciprocal basis.
• Increasing the age limit from 30 to 35.
• Abolishing the fees for these visas.
• Extending the length of visas from two to three years.
• Reverse the Conservatives' unfair increase to income thresholds for family visas,
so that no more families are torn apart.
• Protect the rights of EU citizens and their families in the UK by:
• Automatically granting full Settled Status to all those with Pre-Settled Status.
• Providing them with physical proof of their right to stay.
• Reduce the fee for registering a child as a British citizen from £1,214 to the cost
of administration.
• Overhaul the Immigration Rules to make them simpler, clearer and fairer, and
ensure greater parliamentary scrutiny of future changes.
eGuide Travel CC BY 2.0
• Extend the participation of devolved administrations in the development of the
evidence base for UK-wide policy on work permits and student visas, helping
ensure rules are sensitive to the skills needs of every corner of the UK and every
sector of the economy.
• Strengthen the powers of the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and
Immigration.
• Implement the Windrush Lessons Learned Review in full, without further delay.
• Ensure victims of the Windrush scandal get the compensation they are entitled
to by making the compensation scheme independent of the Home Office.
• Repeal the Conservatives' discriminatory 'Right to Rent' scheme that turns
landlords into border guards.
• Establish a firewall to prevent public agencies from sharing personal information
with the Home Office for the purposes of immigration enforcement and repeal
the immigration exemption in the Data Protection Act.
• Expand access to immigration legal advice by making the legal aid system
simpler, fairer and more generous, as set out in chapter 19.
• Provide safe and legal routes to sanctuary for refugees by:
• Expanding and properly funding the UK Resettlement Scheme.
• Creating new humanitarian travel permits that would allow asylum seekers to
travel to the UK safely to proceed with their claims.
• Establishing a new scheme to resettle unaccompanied child refugees from
elsewhere in Europe.
• Reuniting unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in Europe with family
members in the UK.
• Expanding the scope of refugee family reunion, including enabling
unaccompanied child refugees in the UK to sponsor close family members to
join them.
• Funding community-sponsorship projects for refugees, and rewarding
community groups who develop innovative and successful ways of promoting
social cohesion.
• Offering asylum to people fleeing the risk of violence because of their sexual
orientation or gender identification, ending the culture of disbelief for LGBT+
asylum seekers, and never refusing an LGBT+ applicant on the basis that they
could be discreet.
• Cancel the Conservatives' unworkable Rwanda scheme and invest the savings in
clearing the asylum backlog.
• End the detention of children for immigration purposes, and reduce detention
for adults to an absolute last resort, with a 28-day time limit.
• Increase the 'move-on' period for refugees to 60 days, providing vital time for
new refugees to prepare for life in the UK while ensuring that other public
bodies are not left to pick up the costs of them becoming destitute.
19 Rights and Equality
Liberal Democrats exist to build a free society where every person's rights and
liberties are protected. Everyone should be able to live their lives as who they are:
free to pursue their dreams and fulfil their potential, safe in the knowledge that
their fundamental rights will be protected.
In decades past, the UK has led the world in advancing human rights, civil liberties
and equality for women, LGBT+ people and disabled people. But under the
Conservatives, progress has stalled. They are failing to stand up to hatred and
prejudice, or tackle entrenched inequalities. Instead, they keep threatening to rip
up the UK's Human Rights Act, which protects our fundamental British freedoms.
Liberal Democrats champion the freedom, dignity and wellbeing of every
individual. We will combat all forms of prejudice and discrimination, wherever they
exist, including where intersectionality means individuals face particular
disadvantages.
We believe that the UK's rich diversity is one of its greatest strengths. We will
celebrate that diversity and ensure it is better reflected throughout public life. We
will apply the principles of openness, transparency and accountability to tackle
institutional biases, promote equality and hold power to account.
We will:
• Champion the Human Rights Act and resist any attempts to weaken or
repeal it.
• Develop and implement a comprehensive Race Equality Strategy to
address deep inequalities, including in education, health, criminal justice
and the economy.
• Make misogyny a hate crime and give police and prosecutors the
resources and training they need to prevent and prosecute all hate crimes
while supporting survivors.
• Give everyone a new right to flexible working and every disabled person
the right to work from home if they want to, unless there are significant
business reasons why it is not possible.
• Respect and defend the rights of people of all sexual orientations and
gender identities, including trans and non-binary people.
• Ban all forms of conversion therapies and practices.
• Scrap the Conservatives' draconian anti-protest laws, restoring pre-
existing protections for both peaceful assembly and public safety, and
immediately halt the use of live facial recognition surveillance by the
police and private companies.
In addition, we will:
• Defend hard-won British rights and freedoms by:
• Upholding the UK's commitment to the European Convention on Human
Rights and resisting any attempts to withdraw from it.
• Establishing a new right to affordable, reasonable legal assistance, and making
the Legal Aid system simpler, fairer and more generous.
• Introducing a Digital Bill of Rights to protect everyone's rights online, including
the rights to privacy, free expression, and participation without being
subjected to harassment and abuse.
• Ending the bulk collection of communications data and internet connection
records.
• Introducing a legally binding regulatory framework for all forms of biometric
surveillance.
• Upholding the Equality Act 2010, and making caring and care experience
protected characteristics as set out in chapter 7.
• Ensure that survivors of violence against women and girls and domestic abuse
get the support they deserve by:
• Fully implementing the Istanbul Convention on preventing and combating
violence against women and domestic violence, with protections for all
survivors regardless of nationality or immigration status.
• Expanding the number of refuges and rape crisis centres to meet demand.
• Ensuring sustainable funding for services to support survivors of domestic
abuse, with a particular focus on community-based and specialist 'by and for'
services.
• Ensuring that survivors are properly supported within the criminal justice
system, as set out in chapter 11.
• Require social media companies to publish reports setting out the action they
have taken to address online abuse against women and girls, and other groups
who share a protected characteristic.
• Stand up to hatred by:
• Exposing and confronting the stereotyping, demagoguery and hate speech in
public life and the media that inflames hatred and leads to spikes in hate
crimes.
• Providing funding for protective security measures to places of worship,
schools and community centres that are vulnerable to hate crime and terror
attacks.
• Expand the rights of couples by:
• Introducing legal recognition of humanist marriages.
• Implementing the Law Commission's proposals to reform wedding laws, giving
couples more choice over how and where their wedding takes place, while
respecting religious beliefs and practices.
• Extending limited legal rights to cohabiting couples, to give them greater
protection in the event of separation or bereavement.
• Protect everyone's right to make independent decisions over their reproductive
health without interference by the state and ensure access to high-quality
reproductive healthcare, including enforcing safe access zones around abortion
clinics and hospitals.
• Tackle the specific economic barriers facing women by:
• Ending the gender price gap so that women are not charged more than men
for practically identical products or services marketed at them.
• Ending period poverty by introducing a right for anyone who needs them to
access free period products.
• Expanding access to flexible, affordable childcare, doubling Statutory Maternity
Pay and expanding shared parental leave, as set out in chapter 9.
• Reform the gender recognition process to remove the requirement for medical
reports, recognise non-binary identities in law, and remove the spousal veto.
• Improve diversity in the workplace and public life by:
• Requiring large employers to monitor and publish data on gender, ethnicity,
disability, and LGBT+ employment levels, pay gaps and progression, and
publish five-year aspirational diversity targets.
• Extending the use of name-blind recruitment processes in the public sector
and encouraging their use in the private sector.
• Improving diversity in public appointments by setting ambitious targets and
requiring progress reports to Parliament with explanations when targets are
not met.
• Providing additional support and advice to employers on neurodiversity in the
workplace, and developing a cross-government strategy to tackle all aspects of
discrimination faced by neurodiverse children and adults.
• Implement a comprehensive Race Equality Strategy, including:
• Reducing the disproportionately high maternal mortality rates for black
women and eliminating racial disparities in maternal health, with a cross-
departmental target and strategy.
• Ending the disproportionate use of Stop and Search and requiring all police
forces to adopt ambitious targets for improving the diversity of their
workforce, as set out in chapter 11.
• Ending the Conservatives' Hostile Environment, implementing the Windrush
Lessons Learned Review and repealing the Conservatives' discriminatory 'Right
to Rent' law, as set out in chapter 18.
• Scrapping the Conservatives' voter ID scheme and requiring political parties to
publish candidate diversity data, as set out in chapter 20.
• Halting the use of facial recognition surveillance, which is most likely to wrongly
identify black people and women.
• Make it easier for disabled people to access public life, including the world of
work, by:
• Adopting new accessibility standards for public spaces.
• Improving the legislative framework for blue badges.
• Incorporating the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
into UK law.
• Tackling the disability employment gap by implementing a targeted strategy to
support disabled people into work, with specialist disability employment
support.
• Raising employers' awareness of the Access to Work scheme and simplifying
and speeding up the application process.
• Introducing 'Adjustment Passports' to record the adjustments, modifications
and equipment a disabled person has received, and ensuring that Access to
Work support and equipment stays with the person if they change jobs.
• Building on the British Sign Language Act by increasing the use of BSL in
government communications and working collaboratively with the BSL Alliance
to promote and facilitate the use of BSL.
• Give Parliament time to fully debate and vote on legislation on assisted dying for
terminally ill, mentally competent adults with strict safeguards, subject to a free
vote.
20 Political Reform
We want to ensure that your voice is heard - and we want to transfer power back
to the people.
The shambolic Conservative Government has created a crisis for democracy in this
country, with their cronyism, rule-breaking and constant sleaze scandals.
Successive Conservative Prime Ministers have acted without integrity and treated
Parliament and the people with disdain.
It is a symptom of a broken political system, which enables the Government to
take families up and down the country for granted. It is clear that we need a
political system with fair representation, so that politics is made to work for you
again.
Liberal Democrats want to begin to repair the damage that has been done by the
constant stream of Conservative sleaze, and to end the era of neglect.
We will:
• Ensure no politician can take you for granted, by introducing proportional
representation by the Single Transferable Vote for electing MPs, and local
councillors in England.
• Strengthen democratic rights and participation by scrapping the
Conservatives' voter ID scheme and giving 16- and 17-year-olds the right to
vote.
• Finally hold Government Ministers to account for corruption and sleaze by
enshrining the Ministerial Code in legislation.
• Reform the House of Lords with a proper democratic mandate.
• Transfer greater powers away from Westminster and Whitehall, introduce
a written constitution for a federal United Kingdom with strong voices for
England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and oppose a second
Scottish independence referendum and independence.
• Take big money out of politics by capping donations to political parties.
In addition, we will:
• Reform our politics to put more power in people's hands by:
• Giving 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote in UK general elections and
referendums, and local elections in England.
• Extending the right to full participation in civic life, including the ability to stand
for office or vote in UK referendums, local elections and general elections, to
all EU citizens with settled status, and to anyone else who has lived in the UK
for at least five years and has the right to stay permanently.
• Introducing a legal requirement for local authorities to inform citizens of the
steps they must take to be successfully registered with far greater efforts in
particular to register underrepresented groups, and ensuring that the UK has
an automatic system of inclusion in elections.
• Enabling all UK citizens living abroad to vote for MPs in separate overseas
constituencies, and to participate in UK referendums.
• Restoring to Parliament - instead of the Prime Minister alone - the power to
call and set the date of an early general election.
• Ensuring that a new Prime Minister, and their programme for government,
must win a confidence vote of MPs before taking office.
• Taking a zero-tolerance approach to harassment and bullying in Westminster
and legislating to empower constituents to recall MPs who commit sexual
harassment.
• Bringing into force Section 106 of the Equality Act 2010, requiring political
parties to publish candidate diversity data.
• Establishing national and local citizens' assemblies to ensure that the public
are fully engaged in finding solutions to the greatest challenges we face, such
as tackling the climate emergency and the use of artificial intelligence and
algorithms by the state.
• Make it a national security priority to protect the UK's democratic processes
from any threats or interference.
• Ensure justice for the victims of scandals and prevent future scandals, including
by:
• Providing full and fair compensation to all victims of the Horizon Post Office
scandal and the Infected Blood scandal as quickly as possible.
• Protecting whistleblowers by establishing a new Office of the Whistleblower,
creating new legal protections, and promoting greater public awareness of
their rights.
• Introducing the Hillsborough Law: a statutory duty of candour on police
officers and all public officials, including during all forms of public inquiry and
criminal investigation.
• Make the role of the Adviser on Ministers' Interests truly independent by:
• Empowering them to initiate their own investigations, determine breaches and
publish their report.
• Putting the role on a statutory basis and giving Parliament the power to
appoint them.
• Introduce new rules to ensure that a Prime Minister must have served for at
least one year before becoming eligible to access the Public Duty Cost Allowance
fund.
• Ensure that Ministers receive annual training to prevent sleaze.
• Establish a rigorous, transparent and independent process to appoint significant
public roles, involving a confirmatory vote by the relevant Parliamentary select
committee.
• Bring reporting standards for the List of Ministers' Interests in line with the
House of Commons Register of Members' Interests, so that publication takes
place more frequently.
• Strengthen and expand the lobbying register.
• End the scandal of 'Government by WhatsApp' by:
• Requiring that all Ministers' instant-messaging conversations involving
government business must be placed on the departmental record.
• Ensuring that a record of all lobbying of Ministers via instant messages, emails,
letters and phone calls is published as part of quarterly transparency releases.
• Make elections fairer and more transparent, and raise the quality of political
debate, by:
• Protecting and strengthening the independence of the Electoral Commission,
following Conservative attempts to undermine it.
• Introducing public awareness campaigns about emerging threats and
misinformation campaigns online.
• Pushing for a global convention or treaty to combat disinformation and
electoral interference, supplemented by an annual conference and Global
Counter-Disinformation Fund, to safeguard and promote democracy at home
as well as abroad.
• Mandating the provision of televised leaders' debates in general elections,
based on rules produced by Ofcom.
• Working towards radical real-time transparency for political advertising,
donations and spending, including an easily searchable public database of all
online political adverts.
• Reform the UK and strengthen our family of nations around the principles of
federalism, working in cooperation and partnership, including by:
• Creating a United Kingdom Council of Ministers to bring together the
governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland with regional leaders
across England.
• Removing the ability for the UK Parliament to unilaterally change the powers of
the devolved parliaments or pass laws in their areas of responsibility.
• Creating a Joint Climate Council of the Nations to tackle the climate emergency
by helping to foster innovation and encourage collaborative action.
• Securing cooperation and agreement through common frameworks and a
new dispute resolution process, sharing power, resolving differences maturely
between administrations and delivering better governance.
• Improving joint ministerial work on new cross-cutting policies, such as the UK
industrial strategy.
• Deliver a fair deal for the people of Scotland by:
• Allocating to the Scottish Parliament all the powers set out in the Scotland Act
2016, many of which have already been used by the Scottish Parliament, with
others delayed at the request of the Scottish Government.
• Continuing to back city deals in Scotland by bringing together all spheres of
government.
• Deliver a fair deal for the people of Wales by:
• Completing the next stage of devolution in Wales by implementing the
remaining Silk proposals, substantially reducing the number of powers
reserved to Westminster, and increasing borrowing powers.
• Creating a distinct legal jurisdiction for Wales to reflect the growing divergence
in law as a result of devolution.
• Devolving responsibility for rail services and infrastructure to Wales, with fair
funding and shared governance on cross-border services.
• Devolving powers over youth justice, probation services, prisons and policing
to allow Wales to create an effective, liberal, community-based approach to
policing and tackling crime.
• Strengthening the devolution of powers over broadcasting, to tackle the lack
of trusted sources of information and democratic accountability that were
highlighted during the pandemic.
• Devolving Air Passenger Duty to put Wales on a fair playing field with Scotland
and Northern Ireland and put Cardiff Airport on a fair playing field with
regional airports in England.
• Work constructively with the Northern Ireland Executive to build a permanently
peaceful Northern Ireland, with a stable devolved government and a truly shared
society, including by:
• Supporting policies and initiatives that promote sharing over separation and
counter the cost of division.
• Helping to grow the economy in Northern Ireland, boost infrastructure and
support local businesses.
• Fixing the UK's broken relationship with Europe and accordingly reducing
barriers to trade between Great Britain, Northern Ireland and the Republic of
Ireland.
• Ensure reliable funding for the nations of the UK by:
• Retaining the Barnett formula to adjust spending allocations across the UK
and protect the individual nations' budgets from external shocks.
• Ensuring that the Barnett floor is set at a level that reflects the need for Wales
to be funded fairly, seeking over a Parliament to increase the Welsh block
grant to an equitable level.
• Establishing a joint council to oversee the UK Shared Prosperity Fund and
other 'levelling up' spending, working in partnership with governments,
combined authorities and councils across the UK.
• Support the creation of a UK Constitutional Convention, with the aim of drafting
a new Federal Constitution that sets out the powers of the government at each
tier, founded on the principles of democratic engagement, liberal values and
respect for diverse identities, underpinned by a fair distribution of resources
based on respective needs. The Convention will establish an inclusive approach
for determining the structure of government in England.
21 Defence
Keeping our country secure should be the first priority of any government. We
must always take defence seriously - and work with allies to protect all our
freedoms.
The Conservative Government has been negligent in its approach to the defence
of the United Kingdom. Cutting troop numbers by 10,000 is irresponsible. Their
inability to procure assets on time and on budget is leaving our Armed Forces
without the equipment they need. And their failure to look after service personnel
and veterans properly - from suitable housing to mental health support - is
unforgivable.
The spectre of Donald Trump returning to power in the United States - and his
lack of support for Ukraine and for NATO - should shake the UK and our European
partners out of their state of complacency when it comes to the defence and
security of our continent.
It is time for the UK to lead within Europe on security, working closely with our
democratic European allies so that we can support Ukraine, and each other,
during peace and war.
Liberal Democrats will strengthen our Armed Forces and support the people who
work in them, and keep the UK free, safe and secure by:
• Reversing the Conservative Government's cut to the Army, with a longer-
term ambition of increasing regular troop numbers back to over 100,000.
• Maintaining the UK's support for NATO, and accordingly increasing
defence spending in every year of the Parliament, with an ambition to
spend at least 2.5% of GDP on defence.
• Securing a fair deal for service personnel and veterans.
• Maintaining the UK's nuclear deterrent with four submarines providing
continuous at-sea deterrence, while pursuing multilateral global
disarmament.
• Controlling arms exports to countries with poor human rights records.
In addition, we will:
• Legislate to ensure there is a parliamentary vote before engaging in military
action, and support intervention only when there is a clear legal or humanitarian
case, while preserving the government's ability to engage in action in
emergencies with a retrospective vote or under treaty obligation.
• Introduce a 'presumption of denial' for arms exports to governments listed as
human rights concerns in the Foreign Office's annual human rights report.
• Strengthen the Intelligence and Security Committee by giving it the power to
decide what it publishes and when, and enabling the Houses of Parliament to
elect its members.
• Tackle long-standing problems in defence procurement, including by ensuring
that procurement is part of a comprehensive industrial strategy to secure a
reliable long-term pipeline of equipment procurements, which will strengthen
the Army, Royal Air Force, Royal Navy and Strategic Command.
• Support and promote the development of international treaties on the
principles and limits of the use of technology in modern warfare.
• Secure a fair deal for the armed forces community, and improve recruitment,
retention and resettlement, by:
• Strengthening the Armed Forces Covenant by placing a legal duty on the
Defence Secretary and government departments to give it due regard.
• Improving the standard of Ministry of Defence housing, including by reviewing
maintenance contracts.
• Waiving application fees for indefinite leave for members of the armed forces
on discharge, and their families.
Image UK MOD © Crown copyright 2024 OGL v3.0
• Accepting the recommendations of the Atherton Report on women in the
armed forces.
• Ensuring that military compensation for illness or injury does not count
towards means-testing for benefits.
• Establishing a 'Fair Deal for Service Personnel, Veterans and Families
Commission'.
• Work collaboratively with our democratic European partners and promote
security, including through deterrence, by:
• Strengthening cooperation with our Nordic and Baltic allies via the Joint
Expeditionary Force.
• Building on existing UK-French cooperation arrangements, including the
Lancaster House Treaties.
• Developing closer cooperation with EU agencies and member states over
defence, intelligence and cyber-security.
• Prioritising interoperability with NATO allies and other strategic partners.
• Working more closely in the joint development of innovative defence
technologies and procurement.
• Seeking a defence and security agreement with the EU and its member states.
• Continuing to work closely with our Five Eyes partners.
22 International
Whether on apartheid in South Africa, the illegal war in Iraq or the persecution of
Hong Kongers, Liberal Democrats have always stood up for the vital British values
of democracy, liberty, human rights and the rule of law. We will resist those states
that threaten us and robustly challenge our allies when necessary.
The UK must support democracies around the world, especially those threatened
by aggression such as Ukraine and Taiwan. We must stand up to states like China
and Russia, resisting their attempts to undermine our democratic values and
preventing them from filling the vacuum that the UK has left in Africa and the rest
of the Global South, following the Government's short-sighted cut to the aid
budget.
Following years of Conservative Government, our influence on the world stage is
sadly but undeniably diminished. Liberal Democrats will reverse this decline. We
will rebuild our relations with our allies - not trash them. We will uphold
international law - not undermine it. We will restore Britain's role as an
international development superpower.
With war raging on our continent, now more than ever Britain must lead within
Europe. Liberal Democrats are the only party that will fix the UK's broken
relationship with Europe, by following our four-stage roadmap. Not only will this
leave us and our allies more secure, but it will help restore the British economy
and the prosperity and opportunities of its citizens.
We will:
• Work to counter the global rise in authoritarianism by championing the
liberal, rules-based international order and supporting international
institutions such as the United Nations, the Commonwealth, NATO and the
International Criminal Court.
• Fix the UK's broken relationship with Europe, forge a new partnership
built on cooperation, not confrontation, and move to conclude a new
comprehensive agreement which removes as many barriers to trade
as possible.
• Stand with the people of Ukraine and provide them with the support that
they need in the face of Putin's illegal invasion.
• Restore the UK's reputation as an international development superpower,
by returning spending to 0.7% of national income and re-establishing an
independent international development department.
• Advocate for an immediate bilateral ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza conflict to
resolve the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, get the hostages out, and
provide the space to reach a two-state solution based on 1967 borders
with security and dignity for Israelis and Palestinians.
In addition, we will:
• Protect, defend and promote human rights for all around the world by:
• Working to abolish the death penalty and end the use of torture.
• Using the UK's Magnitsky sanctions to stand up against human rights abuses.
• Banning imports from areas with egregious abuses such as Xinjiang.
• Enshrining in law a right for British nationals, including dual nationals, who
have been politically detained or face other human rights violations abroad to
access UK consular services.
• Developing a comprehensive strategy for promoting the decriminalisation of
homosexuality and advancing LGBT+ rights.
• Appointing an ambassador-level Champion for Freedom of Belief.
• Fix the UK's broken relationship with Europe by following our four-stage
roadmap:
• Taking initial unilateral steps to rebuild the relationship, starting by declaring a
fundamental change in the UK's approach and improving channels for foreign
policy cooperation.
• Rebuilding confidence through seeking to agree partnerships or associations
with EU agencies and programmes such as the European Aviation Safety
Agency, Erasmus Plus, scientific programmes, climate and environment
initiatives, and cooperation on defence, security and crime.
• Deepening the trading relationship with critical steps for the British economy,
including negotiating comprehensive veterinary and plant health agreements
and mutual recognition agreements.
Image DFID (CC BY-ND 2.0 DEED)
• Finally, once ties of trust and friendship have been renewed, and the damage
the Conservatives have caused to trade between the UK and EU has begun to
be repaired, we would aim to place the UK-EU relationship on a more formal
and stable footing by seeking to join the Single Market.
All these measures will help to restore the British economy and the prosperity
and opportunities of its citizens, and are also essential steps on the road to EU
membership, which remains our longer-term objective.
• Restore the UK's role as a global leader in tackling the climate and nature
emergencies, as set out in chapters 5 and 12.
• Finally put a stop to oligarchs from corrupt regimes channelling their money
through the UK by:
• Beginning the seizure of frozen Russian assets in the UK, with proceeds being
repurposed to finance support for Ukraine, so that we can stand with Ukraine
even if US support wavers.
• Properly resourcing the National Crime Agency.
• Closing the loopholes in economic crime legislation which allow Putin's cronies
and other kleptocrats to continue funnelling dirty cash into our country.
• Effectively using the UK's sanctions regime to tackle economic crime.
• Conducting an audit of UK-based assets owned by officials from countries
listed as Foreign Office human rights priorities, including China and Iran.
• Work with our allies to help bring security and stability to the Middle East, which
has become a tinderbox amidst the Israel-Gaza conflict, including by:
• Advocating for an immediate bilateral ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza conflict,
recognising that there is no military solution to remove Hamas from Gaza.
• Leading a diplomatic push towards a two-state solution in Israel and Palestine
based on 1967 borders, to deliver the security and dignity that Israelis and
Palestinians deserve.
• Officially recognising the independent state of Palestine with immediate effect.
• Recognising the existential threat of Iran not just in the Middle East but to
Western democracies, by proscribing Iran's Revolutionary Guard.
• Upholding and respecting international courts and international law.
• Stand with Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Uyghurs including by:
• Continuing to fight for British National (Overseas) passport holders' rights by
closing gaps in the BNO visa scheme.
• Extending BNO integration funding for Hong Kongers in the UK for the
duration of the Parliament.
• Recognising that the human rights abuses being perpetrated against the
Uyghurs in Xinjiang amount to the crime of genocide.
• Building new diplomatic, economic and security partnerships with democratic
countries threatened by China, including Taiwan.
• Work with the international community and neighbouring countries on the
provision of safe, legal passages for those who wish to leave Afghanistan, and
support Afghan refugees in the UK.
• Increase UK humanitarian assistance to Sudan and play a stronger role in
seeking a ceasefire and long-term peace where civilians form a democratic
government and war crimes are prosecuted.
• Provide safe and legal routes to sanctuary for refugees, as set out in chapter 18.
• Properly fund the impartial BBC World Service from the Foreign Office budget
and restore its global reach.
• Pursue a foreign policy agenda with gender equality at its heart, focusing on:
• The transformation of the position of women through economic inclusion.
• Education and training, ensuring the lives of women and girls are not ignored
in favour of trade or regional alliances.
• Working to extend reproductive rights and end female genital mutilation.
• The eradication of sexual violence in conflict, including by increasing
international development funding for such initiatives.
• Ensure that the UK's international development spending is used effectively and
with a primary focus on poverty reduction, as we reverse the Official
Development Assistance cut, including by:
• Putting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals at the heart of the
UK's international development policy.
• Funding genuine partnerships that are rooted in local needs and developed
on grounds of mutual respect.
• Ensuring that the use of the international development budget continues to
be consistent with the OECD/DAC rules and guidelines, and with UK legislation,
and in particular its primary purpose should remain the economic
development of, and poverty reduction within, the partner country.
• Recognising the role of education as a force for good, and committing to
spend 15% of ODA on education in the world's most vulnerable areas,
especially focusing on girls and young women.
• Increasing the proportion of ODA committed to tackling climate change and
environmental degradation, in line with our commitment to climate justice.
• Tackling the growing global crisis of food insecurity and malnutrition by
increasing the proportion of ODA committed to delivering life-saving nutrition
interventions.
This manifesto sets out Liberal Democrat policies and priorities for the United
Kingdom. The Scottish and Welsh Liberal Democrats set their own policy on
devolved matters, and for those policy areas, the proposals here apply to England
only. Our sister party, the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, makes its own policy on
devolved issues in Northern Ireland.
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