Liberal Democrats Launches 2024 Manifesto - 'For a Fair Deal'

The Lib Dems have ambitions of winning up to 60 seats at this election, most of which are currently held by the Tories in the Home Counties and South-West. As a result, Davey directed his pitch towards those liberal conservatives who have become disillusioned with the current government, but who feel no connection to the Labour Party.

To this end, the ’Fair Deal’ outlined in the Lib Dem manifesto seeks to occupy space that has been vacated by Labour as they focus on their economic credentials and plans for GB Energy. As well as putting social care and the NHS front centre, for the Lib Dems this means a loud championing of workers’ rights, environmental issues such as sewage spills, new funding for public services through tax rises on the wealthy and major tax avoidance crackdowns, democratic reform and closer ties with the EU.

Everyone, including the Lib Dems themselves, know they won’t win this election – and if the latest polling is correct, Labour will win a large enough majority that they won’t be needed in coalition either. Yet analysis from Lodestone’s Election Hub and more widely expects their presence and influence in the next Parliament to be significantly greater than in the one just gone.

As a result, while much of today’s manifesto will likely never see its policies etched into the statute books, we now have a clear sense of what the UK’s predicted third party will be gunning for, should they do as well as expected on July 4th.

The full Liberal Democrat Manifesto For a Fair Deal can be found here.

Key pledges include:

The Economy

▪ Commitment to have national debt fall as a share of the economy and ensure that day-to-day spending does not exceed the amount raised in taxes

▪ Raise £7bn from clamping down in tax evasion, through funding HMRC to the tune of an extra £1bn

▪ Restore the Bank Surcharge and Bank Levy revenues to 2016 levels in real terms

▪ Close loopholes in capital gains tax

▪ Introduce a 4% tax on the share buyback schemes of FTSE-100 listed companies, to incentivise productive investment, job creation and economic growth.

▪ Expand the British Business Bank to ensure more SMEs have access to capital, especially for net zero products and tech

▪ Introduce a national financial inclusion strategy

Business

▪ Develop a new 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.

▪ 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 the UK’s high streets.

▪ Introduce a general duty of care for the environment and human rights in business operations and supply chains.

Energy and Environment

▪ 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.

▪ Reform sewage system by turning water companies into public benefit companies, banning bonuses for water bosses until discharges and leaks end, and replacing Ofwat with a new regulator with powers to prevent sewage dumps.

▪ Set meaningful and binding targets to stop the decline of the UK’s 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 and increase the use of sustainable wood in construction

▪ 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.

Health and Social Care

▪ 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.

▪ 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.

Education

▪ 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 invest 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.

▪ 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.

Research and Skills

▪ At least 3% of GDP to be invested in research and development by 2030, rising to 3.5% by 2034.

▪ Re-establish the Industrial Strategy Council on a statutory footing to monitor the UK’s Industrial Strategy

▪ Continue participation in Horizon Europe and join the European Innovation Council

▪ Replace the apprenticeship levy with a skills and training levy.

▪ Boost the take-up of apprenticeships, including by guaranteeing they are paid at least the National Minimum Wage by scrapping the lower apprentice rate.

▪ 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.

▪ Develop National Colleges for key sectors, such as renewable energy, to deliver high-level vocational skills

▪ Expand higher vocational training like foundation degrees, Higher National Diplomas, Higher National Certificates and Higher Apprenticeships.

▪ Improve the quality of vocational education

Tech

▪ Increase the Digital Services Tax on social media firms and other tech giants.

▪ Ensure that gigabit broadband is available to every home and business, including in rural and remote communities

▪ Set a UK-wide target for digital literacy

▪ Introduce clearer terms and conditions for products

▪ Create a clear, workable and well-resourced cross-sectoral regulatory framework for artificial intelligence that:

o Promotes innovation while creating certainty for AI users, developers and investors.

o Establishes transparency and accountability for AI systems in the public sector.

o 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

▪ Increase the Digital Services Tax on social media firms and other tech giants from 2% to 6%.

Housing

▪ Build 380,000 new homes a year across the UK, including 150,000 social homes a year, through new garden cities and community-led development of cities and towns.

▪ Deliver 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.

▪ Give local authorities, including National Park Authorities, the powers to end Right to Buy in their areas.

▪ End rough sleeping within the next Parliament and immediately scrap the Vagrancy Act.

▪ Abolish residential leaseholds and capping ground rents to a nominal fee, so that everyone has control over their property.

Rural Policy

▪ 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, 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 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.

Defence

▪ Reverse Army cuts, with a longer-term ambition of increasing regular troop numbers back to over 100,000.

▪ Maintain 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.

▪ Secure a fair deal for service personnel and veterans.

▪ Maintain the UK’s nuclear deterrent with four submarines providing continuous at-sea deterrence, while pursuing multilateral global disarmament.

▪ Control arms exports to countries with poor human rights records.

Transport

▪ Make it cheaper and easier for drivers to switch to electric vehicles by rapidly rolling out 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.

Political Reform

▪ Introduce proportional representation by the Single Transferable Vote for electing MPs, and local councillors in England.

▪ Scrap the voter ID scheme.

▪ Give 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote.

▪ Enshrine the Ministerial Code in legislation.

▪ Reform the House of Lords with a 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.

▪ Cap donations to political parties.

Foreign Affairs

▪ 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.

Communities and Local Government

▪ 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.

▪ 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 rise of antisemitism and Islamophobia.

▪ Champion investment in the Northern Powerhouse, Western Gateway and Midlands Engine.

▪ Support local and regional economic partnerships to coordinate development projects and boost growth in their areas.

▪ Work with the devolved administrations to develop joint policies and partnerships to boost growth across the whole UK.

Work and Pensions

▪ 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 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.

Crime

▪ Restore community policing, where officers are visible, trusted and focused on preventing and solving crimes – especially rape and other violent crime.

▪ Create a new statutory guarantee that all burglaries will be attended by the police and properly investigated.

▪ Invest in the criminal justice system to tackle the backlog of court cases and ensure swift justice.

▪ Break the cycle of reoffending by improving rehabilitation in prisons and on release, and strengthening the supervision of offenders in the community.

▪ Ensure 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.

Culture, Media and Sport

▪ 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.

Immigration

▪ End the ‘Hostile Environment’ approach to immigration and invest instead in officers, training and technology to tackle smuggling, trafficking and modern slavery.

▪ Transfer policymaking over work visas and overseas students out of the Home Office and into other Departments.

▪ Scrap the Illegal Migration Act and the 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.

Rights and Equality

▪ 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 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.