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Home , Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Party, Labour Party (Ireland), Labour Party (Poland), Labour Party (UK), Progress (organisation)

THE LABOUR PARTY MANIFESTO 2019 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE

CONTENTS

FOREWORD BY 6

A GREEN 9 ECONOMY AND ENERGY 11 TRANSPORT 19 ENVIRONMENT 22 ANIMAL 25

REBUILD OUR PUBLIC SERVICES 27 FUNDING 29 NHS AND SOCIAL CARE 31 NATIONAL EDUCATION SERVICE 37 POLICE AND SECURITY 42 46 COMMUNITIES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT 49 FIRE AND RESCUE 52 DIGITAL, CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT 53

TACKLE POVERTY AND INEQUALITY 57 WORK 59 WOMEN AND EQUALITIES 65 MIGRATION 70 SOCIAL SECURITY 72 HOUSING 77 CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES 81

THE FINAL SAY ON 87 THE FINAL SAY ON BREXIT 89

A NEW INTERNATIONALISM 93 A NEW INTERNATIONALISM 95 EFFECTIVE DIPLOMACY 97 DEFENCE AND SECURITY 100 INTERNATIONAL AND 103 FOREWORD

This election will shape our country for We can do better than this. How can a generation. It is your opportunity to it be right that in the fifth richest transform our country, so that it works country in the world, people’s living not just for a few, but for all of us. It standards are going backwards and life is a chance to deliver the real change expectancy is stalling? Britain needs. This manifesto sets out The Conservative Government is failing. how a will do that. It has failed on the economy, on the Some people say this is the Brexit climate crisis, on investment for the election. But it’s also the climate future, on public services and on Brexit. election, the investment election, the It is simply not working for most people. NHS election, the living standards A Labour government will unlock the election, the education election, the potential of all those held back for too poverty election, the fair taxes election. long. Labour will be on your side. Above all, it’s the change election. Labour will rewrite the rules of the It’s time to take on the vested interests economy, so that it works for everyone. holding people back. The last decade We will rebuild our public services, by has seen a wealth grab by a privileged taxing those at the top to properly fund few, supported by the Conservatives, the services we all rely on. at the expense of the majority. The big polluters, financial speculators and We will launch the largest-scale corporate tax-dodgers have had a free investment programme in ride for too long. times to fund the jobs and industries of the future, so that no one is held back Labour will build a fairer Britain that and no left behind. This is a cares for all, where wealth and power fully costed programme to upgrade our are shared. economy and transform our country. am not prepared to continue to see We will kick-start a Green Industrial more families without a proper home Revolution to tackle the climate and more people queuing at food banks emergency by shifting to renewable or sleeping rough on the streets. energy, investing in rail and electric I am not prepared to put up cars, and making housing energy- with communities blighted by lack efficient, to reduce fuel poverty and of investment, endless cuts to vital excess winter deaths. services and millions struggling to make ends meet, while tax cuts are handed to the richest.

6 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE THE FUTURE IS OURS TO MAKE. IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE – FOR THE MANY, NOT THE FEW. TOGETHER, WE CAN DELIVER IT.

We will create a million climate jobs We will end Britain, and lift in every region and nation of the children and pensioners out of poverty. UK – good, skilled jobs that will bring We will bring in a Real of prosperity back to parts of our country at least £10 per hour for all workers neglected for too long. – with equal rights at work from day We will bring rail, mail, water and energy one on the job. We will end insecurity into public ownership to end the great and exploitation by ending zero-hours privatisation rip-off and save you contracts and strengthening trade money on your fares and bills. union rights.

We will deliver full-fibre broadband Labour will create a National Education free to everybody in every home in Service to provide support and our country by creating a new public opportunity throughout your life: from service, boosting the economy, Sure Start centres to top-quality early connecting communities and putting years education; well-funded schools money back in your pocket. with lower class sizes to free university

FOREWORD 7 tuition with no fees; and free lifelong power in the hands of the many. Boris learning, giving you the chance to Johnson’s Conservatives will look after reskill throughout your life. the privileged few.

Labour will give the NHS the funding This manifesto offers the chance of it needs, end privatisation, and never real change for every generation and let our health service be up for grabs in every community. When Labour wins, any trade negotiation. We’ll expand our the nurse wins, the pensioner wins, the NHS to offer free prescriptions for all student wins, the office worker wins, the and free basic dentistry, building on its engineer wins. We all win. founding principles. We can and we must do better We will end the social care crisis that as a country. has left 1.5 million elderly people This is our last chance to tackle without the care they need. Labour will the climate emergency. fund free personal care for older people and extra care packages. The future is ours to make. It’s time for real change – for the many, not the few. I’m really worried by the rise in crime Together, we can deliver it. – and the fact that the most serious violent crime has risen even further. We will reverse a decade of cuts to police and vital public services that have shown you simply can’t keep people Jeremy Corbyn safe on the cheap. Leader of the Labour Party

Labour will protect our security at home and abroad. After years of failed foreign interventions and wars, we will end the ‘bomb first, talk later’ approach and instead have a based on This manifesto deals both with Labour’s policies which apply across the United peace, justice and human rights. Kingdom and, where responsibilities And we will get Brexit sorted in six have been devolved, it also sets out our policies for . months by giving people the final say – with a choice between a sensible In devolved areas such as health, leave deal or remain. We will implement education and local government, whatever the decide. Labour’s detailed policies for and are set out The choice could not be clearer at this in the manifestos published by election. Labour will put wealth and our Welsh and Scottish parties.

8 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE A GREEN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

11 ECONOMY AND ENERGY 19 TRANSPORT 22 ENVIRONMENT 25 ANIMAL WELFARE

9

ECONOMY AND ENERGY

This election is We must confront this change while dealing with about the crisis the growing inequality and insecurity in Britain. of living standards Labour led the UK Parliament in declaring a climate and the climate and environmental emergency. The next Labour and environmental government will lead the world in fighting it, with a emergency. Whether plan to drive up living standards by transforming our we are ready or not, economy into one low in carbon, rich in good jobs, we stand on the brink radically fairer and more democratic. of unstoppable change. The climate crisis ties us all into a common fate. This election is our best hope to protect future generations from an uninhabitable planet. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said we need to cut global emissions in half by 2030 to have a chance of keeping global heating within safe limits – that means acting now, and acting decisively.

The Tories wasted a decade serving the interests of big polluters. Labour will use the crucial next decade to act. The Tories slashed support for renewable energy while pushing through dangerous fracking.

A GREEN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 11 Now Britain is decades off course on extensive skills are passed on to vital emissions targets. the next generation of workers.

That’s why Labour will kick-start a Green We will show the world how prioritising Industrial Revolution that will create one sustainability will not only deliver million jobs in the UK to transform our immediate improvements to everyone’s industry, energy, transport, agriculture lives but also offer humanity a pathway and our buildings, while restoring to a more equitable and enlightened nature. Our Green New Deal aims to economy: one that protects our achieve the substantial majority of our environment, reins in corporate power, emissions reductions by 2030 in a way revitalises , unites our that is evidence-based, just and that communities, builds international delivers an economy that serves the solidarity and promises a better quality interests of the many, not the few. of life for all. The scale of the challenge requires nothing less. Just as the original Industrial Revolution brought industry, jobs and pride to Tackling the destruction of our planet our towns, Labour’s world-leading is a question of justice – for the Green Industrial Revolution will rebuild communities at home and abroad them, with more rewarding, well-paid who are most affected by it and jobs, lower energy bills and whole for our children who will bear the new industries to revive parts of our consequences if we don’t. Social justice country that have been neglected for will define Labour’s approach. We will too long. For some, industrial transition make sure that the costs of the green has become a byword for devastation, transition fall fairly and are mostly because successive Conservative borne by the wealthy and those most governments were content to sit back responsible for the problem. and leave the fate of whole industries 2019 saw the blossoming of a global and communities at the mercy of movement calling on politicians to market forces. A Labour government wake up and act on the climate and will never let that happen. environmental emergency. Labour We will work in partnership with the welcomed that movement and, as a workforce and their trade unions government in waiting, we have turned in every sector of our economy, so its demands into detailed, credible that they lead the transition in their plans for real change. industries, creating new, good-quality jobs and making sure that their

12 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE Investment be mandated to lend in line with our mission to decarbonise our economy Delivering the far-reaching change while increasing productivity and needed to tackle the climate and creating good jobs across the country. environmental emergency will require a As well as large-scale national and full mobilisation of national resources, regional projects, smaller loans will both public and private. be available through our new Post Labour will create a Sustainable Bank based in Post Office branches, Investment Board to bring together enabling thousands of bottom-up the Chancellor, Business Secretary and transformational changes by start-ups, Governor to oversee, small businesses, local co-operatives co-ordinate and bring this and community projects in towns and investment – involving trade unions villages up and down the country. and business. We will ask the Office for We will make sure that the UK’s Budget Responsibility to incorporate financial sector is helping to tackle the climate and environmental impacts emergency rather than fuelling it. We into its forecasts so that the cost of not will do this by improving the fitness acting will be factored into every of our financial authorities to mobilise fiscal decision. green investment and by giving them The cost of not acting is far greater powers to manage the risk to financial than the cost of acting. We will launch stability posed by short-sighted a National Transformation Fund of investment in polluting assets. £400 billion and rewrite the Treasury’s Just 100 companies globally are investment rules to guarantee that responsible for the majority of carbon every penny spent is compatible with emissions. We won’t be afraid to tackle our climate and environmental targets this wanton corporate destruction by – and that the costs of not acting are taking on the powerful interests that are fully accounted for too. Of this, £250 causing climate change. We will change billion will directly fund the transition the criteria a company must meet to be through a Green Transformation Fund listed on the Stock Exchange dedicated to renewable and low-carbon so that any company that fails to energy and transport, biodiversity and contribute to tackling the climate and environmental restoration. environmental emergency is delisted. We will create a National Investment Bank, backed up by a network of Regional Development Banks, to provide £250 billion of lending for enterprise, infrastructure and innovation over 10 years. They will

A GREEN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 13 Levelling Up Across the Country arrangements. They will set priorities for lending, giving every region and nation Many parts of Britain would need a new and powerful lever to rebuild their this investment even without a climate economy on their own terms. and environmental emergency. Years of under-investment and neglect We will shift the political centre by Westminster have left too many of gravity by placing communities feeling powerless and Transformation Fund Unit, a key part of too many areas left behind with low- the Treasury, in the North of England quality jobs, weak productivity and and build up the regional offices of slow growth. government in each of the nine English regions to co-ordinate government The climate and environmental policies at the regional level, as well as emergency is a chance to unite the ensuring a regional voice in Whitehall. country to face this common challenge by mobilising all our national resources, both financial and human. But we will Energy only succeed by ensuring that everyone shares in the benefits. Labour will make Energy use in buildings accounts for sure that investment is spread evenly 56% of the UK’s total emissions, making across the whole country and will give it the single most polluting sector. We powers and funding to every region and will develop the recommendations nation of the UK. of our ‘30 by 2030’ report to put the UK on track for a net-zero-carbon We will bring about a radical energy system within the 2030s – and decentralisation of power in Britain so go faster if credible pathways can that local people and communities are be found. We will deliver nearly 90% given far greater control over their own of electricity and 50% of heat from lives and prospects. renewable and low-carbon sources A Local Transformation Fund in each by 2030. English region will be used exclusively We will build: to fund infrastructure projects decided at a local level, as will devolved • 7,000 new offshore wind turbines governments in Wales, Scotland • 2,000 new onshore wind turbines and . Our Regional Development Banks will be governed • Enough solar panels to cover 22,000 by boards made up of key local football pitches. stakeholders such as local chambers of • New nuclear power needed for energy commerce, trade unions and councillors security. – with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland empowered to make similar

14 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE We will trial and expand tidal energy Ownership and invest to reduce the costs of We will not achieve the promise of a fair renewable and low-carbon hydrogen and sustainable economy if we repeat production. We will upgrade almost the mistakes of the carbon era, when all of the UK’s 27 million homes to the the capture of a natural resource for highest energy-efficiency standards, private profit created a vastly unequal reducing the average household energy and polluting economy dominated by bill by £417 per household per year by powerful vested interests. 2030 and eliminating fuel poverty. We will introduce a zero-carbon homes It’s not just carbon. From the standard for all new homes. depletion of fish stocks to the burning of the Amazon, profit has As part of heat decarbonisation, we will proved a poor regulator for use of roll out technologies like heat pumps, our natural resources. solar hot water and hydrogen, and invest in district heat networks using Whether it is the trillions of litres of waste heat. water lost through leakages, barriers to renewable energy connecting to the To balance the grid, we will expand grid or the billions of pounds of bill- power storage and invest in grid payers’ money being siphoned off in enhancements and interconnectors. dividends to wealthy shareholders, We will expand distributed and Tory privatisation of our utilities has community energy, and immediately been a disaster for both our planet and and permanently ban fracking. our wallets.

We will support energy workers We will put people and planet before through transition and guarantee them profit by bringing our energy and retraining and a new, unionised job on water systems into democratic public equivalent terms and conditions. ownership. In public hands, energy and water will be treated as rights rather than We will introduce a windfall tax on oil commodities, with any surplus reinvested companies, so that the companies that or used to reduce bills. Communities knowingly damaged our climate will themselves will decide, because utilities help cover the costs. We will provide a won’t be run from Whitehall but by strategy to safeguard the people, jobs service-users and workers. and skills that depend on the offshore oil and gas industry. Public ownership will secure democratic control over nationally strategic infrastructure and provide collective stewardship for key natural resources.

A GREEN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 15 In the case of energy, it will also help Whenever public money is invested deliver Labour’s ambitious emissions in an energy generation project, the targets. Whereas private network public sector will take a stake and return companies have failed to upgrade the profits to the public. grid at the speed and scale needed, publicly owned networks will accelerate and co-ordinate investment to connect Industry and Innovation renewable and low-carbon energy while Averting climate catastrophe offers working with energy unions to support huge economic opportunities. energy workers through the transition. But Britain will only benefit from Under Labour’s plans: a Green Industrial Revolution with the right policies. • A new UK National Energy Agency will own and maintain the national grid Over the past three decades, Britain has infrastructure and oversee the delivery reduced its emissions at the expense of our decarbonisation targets. of domestic industry by offshoring production. This is an accounting trick, • 14 new Regional Energy Agencies not a solution. It does not protect the will replace the existing district climate, is unfair to other countries network operators and hold statutory and it damages jobs and communities responsibility for decarbonising at home. electricity and heat and reducing fuel poverty. Labour will take full responsibility for our carbon footprint instead of passing the • The supply arms of the Big Six energy buck. We will instruct the Committee companies will be brought into public on Climate Change to assess the ownership where they will continue to emissions the UK imports as well as supply households with energy while those it produces, and recommend helping them to reduce their policies to tackle them, including making energy demands. UK industry the greenest in the world. The Conservatives allowed the The Conservatives have presided over a proceeds of North Sea oil to be lost decade of productivity and allowed squandered on tax cuts for the richest Britain to fall behind in the green and captured in profits for the few, technologies of the future. Labour will instead of investing them in our future. make sure this never happens again. We now stand at an even greater crossroads in the development of our Targeted science, research and national economy. Under Labour, our innovation will be crucial to tackling the green future will be owned by all of us. climate crisis, dealing with the plastic

16 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE waste filling our oceans and addressing sectors and supply chains and creates other societal challenges, such as hundreds of thousands of good, an ageing population and antibiotic unionised jobs here at home. resistance. As part of our plan to usher We will use the power of public in a Green Industrial Revolution, Labour procurement to strengthen local jobs will create an innovation nation, setting and supply chains and will require all a target for 3% of GDP to be spent on companies bidding for public contracts research and development (R&D) by to recognise trade unions, pay suppliers 2030. We will achieve this target by on time and demonstrate equalities increasing direct support for R&D and best practice. reforming the innovation ecosystem to better ‘crowd in’ private investment. As we transition, we will ensure the UK’s automotive sector isn’t left behind by We will establish a Foundation the electric revolution by investing in Industries Sector Council to provide three new gigafactories and four metal a clean and long-term future for our reprocessing plants. By supporting existing heavy industries like steel UK-made electrical steel we will ensure and glass and fund R&D into newer robust support for an end to end UK technologies like hydrogen and carbon supply chain. We’ll also take on the capture and storage. global plastics crisis by investing in a A thriving steel industry will be vital new plastics remanufacturing industry to the Green Industrial Revolution. creating thousands of jobs, ending Labour will support our steel through exports of plastic waste and reducing public procurement, taking action on our contribution to ocean pollution. industrial energy prices, exempting ’s progressive trade strategy will capital from business rates, investing be aligned with our industrial strategy in R&D, building three new steel to help develop the industrial base recycling plants and upgrading existing needed to deliver high-quality exports production sites. and the decent jobs that go with them. We will ensure that new technologies Labour will champion exports from aren’t just invented here, but are the environmental goods and services engineered, manufactured and sector, building on the 300,000 jobs exported from here. We will put that the sector already sustains. We British innovation at the heart of will uphold the highest environmental our procurement to support local and social regulations in all our trade sourcing and reshoring, so that every relations, and will never downgrade investment we make strengthens standards as ‘barriers’ to trade. our manufacturing and engineering

A GREEN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 17 Skills will be topped up with any surplus raised through Inclusive Ownership Our Green Industrial Revolution will Funds and made accessible to non- create at least one million well-paid, levy-paying businesses. unionised jobs in the UK. We will train people in the skills they need to access Targeted bursaries will be available to these jobs of the future. women, BAME people, care leavers, ex-armed forces personnel, and people Britain’s skills crisis has grown under with disabilities to encourage them to the Tories. The Apprenticeship Levy take up climate apprenticeships – the has been beset by problems, leaving STEM of the future. employers paying into a training budget they are unable to spend. And it is We will further help small businesses not delivering for small businesses. by increasing the amount that can We cannot afford to carry on like this. be transferred to non-levy-paying employers to 50% and introducing Labour will make it easier for employers an online matching service to help to spend the levy by allowing it to be levy-paying businesses find smaller used for a wider range of accredited businesses to transfer their funds to. training, in line with guidelines set by the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education and government’s wider priorities for the economy.

We will launch a Climate Apprenticeship programme to enable employers to develop the skills needed to lead the world in clean technology.

Under this programme, employers will be expected to allocate 25% of the funds in their Apprenticeship Levy accounts to training Climate Apprentices. These funds can be spent directly or allocated to a ring-fenced Climate Apprenticeship Fund, which

18 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE TRANSPORT

Labour will build a Cutting emissions will drive our transport policies. We sustainable, affordable, will review public expenditure on transport to ensure accessible and integrated that it promotes environmental sustainability and transport system, contributes to decarbonisation. founded on the principle Bus services have been devastated by the that transport is an Conservatives, despite carrying more people than any essential public service. other mode of public transport. Women are especially dependent on buses, which also provide a lifeline for both older and younger people and for many economically disadvantaged groups.

Labour will ensure that councils can improve bus services by regulating and taking public ownership of bus networks, and we will give them resources and full legal powers to achieve this cost-effectively, thereby ending the race to the bottom in working conditions for bus workers. Where councils take control of their buses, Labour will introduce free bus travel for under-25s. We will increase and expand local services,

A GREEN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 19 reinstating the 3,000 routes that have deliver rail electrification and expansion been cut, particularly hitting rural across the whole country, including in communities. Wales. We will ensure that these major infrastructure projects are a model Labour will deliver improvements for of good practice and rail passengers by bringing our railways pay due regard to the environmental back into public ownership, using impact. options including franchise expiry. This will enable us to make fares simpler and We will promote the use of rail freight more affordable, rebuild the fragmented in order to reduce carbon emissions, air railways as a nationally integrated pollutants and congestion on the roads public service, cut the wastage of and expand the provision of publicly private profit, improve accessibility for owned rail freight services. disabled people, ensure safe staffing We will increase the funding available levels and end driver-only operation. for cycling and walking. We will bring Our publicly owned rail company together transport and land-use will steer network planning and planning to create towns and cities investments. It will co-ordinate in which walking and cycling are the mainline upgrades, resignalling, best choice: safe, accessible, healthy, rolling stock replacement and major efficient, economical and pollution- projects. We will implement a full, free. We will help children’s health and rolling programme of electrification. well-being by ensuring street designs Our model will ensure continuity of provide freedom for physically active skills, jobs and supply chain capacity outdoor play and by introducing to reduce costs, improve productivity measures to ensure the zones around and support the economic benefits of our schools are safer, with cleaner air. Labour’s Green Industrial Revolution. Our transport programme is focused on We will introduce a long-term creating better, publicly accessible local investment plan including delivering transport systems. By improving public for the North as part of transport, Labour will help people to improved connectivity across the become less reliant on their cars, for our northern regions. We will consult with better health, for a cleaner environment local communities to reopen branch and to improve quality of life in our lines. We will also unlock capacity towns and cities. The Conservatives and extend high-speed rail networks have committed to ending new sales of nationwide by completing the full combustion engine vehicles by 2040. HS2 route to Scotland, taking full Labour will aim for 2030. account of the environmental impacts We will position the UK at the forefront of different route options. We will of the development and manufacture

20 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE of ultra-low emission vehicles and will support their sale. We will invest in electric vehicle charging infrastructure and in electric community car clubs. We will accelerate the transition of our public sector car fleets and our public buses to zero-emissions vehicles.

We will reform taxi and private hire services, including a review of licensing authority jurisdictions, setting national minimum standards of safety and accessibility and updating regulations to keep pace with technological change and to close loopholes to ensure a level playing field.

We will adopt an ambitious Vision Zero approach to UK road safety, striving for zero deaths and serious injuries. Labour will invest to make our neglected local roads, pavements and cycleways safer for the everyday journeys of both drivers and vulnerable road users. We will review all tolled crossings.

Labour recognises the Davies Commission’s assessment of pressures on airport capacity in the South East. Any expansion of airports must pass our tests on air quality, noise pollution, climate change obligations and countrywide benefits. We will examine fiscal and regulatory options to ensure a response to the climate crisis in a way that is fair to consumers and protects the economy.

We will take action to end nationality- based discrimination in seafarer pay.

A GREEN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 21 ENVIRONMENT

A Labour government’s We are facing a climate and environment emergency, Green Industrial and unlike the Tories we will not trade our environment Revolution is in pursuit of reckless trade agreements. complemented by Labour will review and improve protected area our Plan for Nature. designations, from National Parks to local nature Our commitments reserves and urban green spaces. to ecosystem repair and environmental We will introduce a Climate and Environment protections work hand Emergency Bill setting out in law robust, binding in hand with sustainable new standards for decarbonisation, nature recovery, jobs and industries, and environmental quality and habitats and species social justice. protection.

We will maintain and continuously improve the existing EU standards of environmental regulation.

A Healthy Environment

Our polluted air contributes to over 40,000 premature deaths a year and poisons our environment, with

22 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE further impacts on children’s health. But We will establish a new environmental the Conservatives’ air-quality measures tribunal to ensure that administrative are so inadequate they have been decisions are consistent with found to be illegal. environmental and nature-recovery obligations. Labour will introduce a new Clean Air Act, with a vehicle scrappage scheme and clean air zones, complying with Land World Health Organisation limits for fine particles and nitrous oxides. Land is a public good, but it is not a common asset. In 1979, 20% of land We will provide an extra £5.6 billion was owned by the public sector. in funding to improve the standard Today, that has halved. of flood defences and respond to the increased risk of flooding, Green Belts protect one tenth of our prioritising areas at risk in North land and offer conservation of some West England, Yorkshire and the East of our natural environment. Introduced Midlands that have been neglected by Labour in 1947 to provide access by Conservative investments. to the countryside, they are threatened by developments.

A Labour government will maintain Nature Restoration agricultural and rural structural funds Our Plan for Nature will set legally but repurpose them to support binding targets to drive the restoration environmental land management of species and habitats. and sustainable methods of food production. We will embark on an ambitious programme of tree planting, with both We will invest in more farms to forestry and native woodland species. replace those lost, and will work with agricultural organisations to increase We will fully fund the Environment access into farming for new entrants. Agency and other frontline environment agencies, and improve upstream river management. Food We will create new National Parks A quarter of all food purchased is alongside a revised system of other wasted every year, equivalent to over protected area designations, which 20 million tonnes of greenhouse gas will guard existing wildlife sites and emissions, costing over £20 billion. join up important habitats, while also ensuring more people can enjoy living Yet Britain has an epidemic in food- closer to nature. related ill health, obesity, malnutrition

A GREEN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 23 and diabetes, as well as increased food Waste and Recycling insecurity – with a boom in food bank Waste, including plastic waste, pollutes use and record levels of hunger. our land and seas, killing wildlife and Labour will introduce A Right to Food. contaminating our food. We will end ‘food bank Britain’. We will We will make producers responsible ensure everyone has access to healthy, for the waste they create and for nutritious, sustainably produced food. the full cost of recycling or disposal, We will halve food bank usage within encouraging more sustainable design a year and remove the need for them and manufacturing. In government in altogether in three years. We will Wales, Labour has transformed the establish a National Food Commission position of recycling, placing them in and review the Allotments Act. We the top five globally for recycling rates. will make food security a reason to A UK Labour government will learn intervene in the economy and work with from Wales’ example, and will also local councils to minimise food waste back bottle-return schemes. We will put farmers, fishers, food We will invest in three new recyclable producers and workers at the heart steel plants in areas with a proud history of our plans for delivering healthy of steel manufacturing. food locally. We will support local food networks, expand access to farm holdings and ensure rights of union representation for all food and agricultural workers. We will re-establish an Agricultural Wages Board in England so every part of the UK is covered.

We will set maximum sustainable yields for all shared fish stocks, redistribute fish quotas along social and environmental criteria and, if people vote to leave the EU, require the majority of fish caught under a UK quota to be landed in UK ports.

We aim to achieve net-zero-carbon food production in Britain by 2040.

24 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE ANIMAL WELFARE

The Conservatives will Labour has published an ambitious animal welfare sacrifice animal welfare manifesto which reiterates our commitments to standards in trade deals prohibit foxhunting and end the cull of badgers. with other countries. In England, we will introduce an animal welfare They threaten to bring commissioner, prohibit the sale of snares and glue back and are traps, end the badger cull and ban the keeping of pursuing the ineffective primates as pets. We will work internationally to end badger cull – the commercial whaling, ban the importation of hunting largest destruction of trophies of threatened species, and boost police a protected species in resources to tackle rural and wildlife crime. living memory.

A GREEN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 25 26 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE REBUILD OUR PUBLIC SERVICES

29 FUNDING 31 NHS AND SOCIAL CARE 37 NATIONAL EDUCATION SERVICE 42 POLICE AND SECURITY 46 JUSTICE 49 COMMUNITIES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT 52 FIRE AND RESCUE 53 DIGITAL, CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT

27

FUNDING

Universal public services, Public services do more than make sure everyone collectively provided has the basics. They create shared experiences and through general taxation strengthen social bonds. They make our lives richer and and free at the point of more fulfilling. use for all, are how we A decade of Tory cuts has pushed our public services guarantee the right to a to breaking point. Labour offers real change – we good life. will make Britain’s public services the best and most extensive in the world.

We will pay for this by creating a fairer taxation system, asking for a little more from those with the broadest shoulders, and making sure that everyone pays what they owe.

We will reverse some of the Tories’ cuts to corporation tax while keeping rates lower than in 2010.

We’ll ask those who earn more than £80,000 a year to pay a little more , while freezing National Insurance and income tax rates for everyone else.

REBUILD OUR PUBLIC SERVICES 29 We will end the unfairness that sees Our most valuable assets are the income from wealth taxed at lower dedicated people who work in rates than income from work. VAT is our public services, but under this a regressive tax that hits the poorest government their pay has been cut in hardest and we guarantee no increases real terms. Labour will restore public in VAT. sector pay to at least pre-financial crisis levels (in real terms), by delivering We will launch the biggest ever year-on-year above- pay rises, crackdown on and starting with a 5% increase, to reward evasion and reform the inefficient and retain the people who do so much system of tax reliefs. for us all. Public services must also be accountable. Labour will end the current presumption in favour of outsourcing public services and introduce a presumption in favour of insourcing. And we will stop the public getting ripped off by taking back all PFI contracts over time.

When services are procured from the private sector, companies will be assessed against best practice public service criteria, including provisions for , fair wage clauses, adherence to environmental standards, effective equalities policies, full tax compliance and application of pay ratios. In the public sector, we will enforce maximum pay ratios of 20:1.

We will repair the damage the Tories have done to our social fabric, with a £150 billion Social Transformation Fund to replace, upgrade and expand our schools, hospitals, care homes and council houses. Public buildings will be modernised to ensure a reduction in their carbon footprint.

30 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE NHS AND SOCIAL CARE

The National Health A decade of Tory health cuts and privatisations has Service is one of Labour’s pushed our greatest institution to the brink. Our proudest achievements. hospitals are crumbling, equipment is outdated, IT The right to free-at- systems are inadequate and community facilities the-point-of-use are neglected. healthcare, universal and There are 100,000 staff vacancies in NHS England, comprehensive in scope, including a shortage of 43,000 nurses. There are is in action. 15,000 fewer hospital beds. Every winter, bed occupancy rates exceed dangerous levels. Patients now wait far too long to see their GP, for an ambulance or for treatment.

Our immediate task is to repair our health services.

Our urgent priority is to end NHS privatisation.

Our mission is to create the conditions to prevent illness and enable people to live longer, healthier lives.

REBUILD OUR PUBLIC SERVICES 31 Quality Care for All and to ensure future decisions are transparent and balanced fairly A Labour government will invest in the between every region. We will complete NHS to give patients the modern, well- the confirmed hospital rebuilds and resourced services they need. We will invest more in primary care settings, increase expenditure across the health modern AI, cyber technology and sector by an average 4.3% a year. This state-of-the-art medical equipment, investment enables us to end patient including more MRI and CT scanners. charges, guarantee the standards of healthcare patients are entitled to We will ensure data protection for receive from NHS England, invest in NHS and patient information, a highly education for the health workforce and valuable publicly funded resource that restore public health grants. can be used for better diagnosis of conditions and for ground-breaking Our investments mean we deliver the research. We will ensure NHS data is not standards of care enshrined in the NHS. exploited by international technology We will stabilise our overstretched A&E and pharmaceutical corporations. departments. We will improve stroke, heart disease and cancer survival rates We will uphold the principle of by providing earlier diagnosis and comprehensive healthcare by providing improved screening rates. We will call a free annual NHS dental check-ups. moratorium on bed cuts. We will guarantee universal healthcare by ensuring women’s and children’s Every penny spent on privatisation and health services are comprehensive, outsourcing is a penny less spent on by protecting the rights of EU workers, patient care. Labour will end and reverse other migrants and refugees and by privatisation in the NHS in the next ensuring all our services are made Parliament. We will repeal the Health accessible to BAME, LGBT+ and and Social Care Act and reinstate the disabled patients. We will end responsibilities of the Secretary of mixed-sex wards. State to provide a comprehensive and universal healthcare system. We will end We will ensure our NHS becomes a net- the requirement on health authorities to zero-carbon service with an NHS Forest put services out to competitive tender. of one million trees, more efficient We will ensure services are delivered heating and insulation systems, greater in-house and also bring subsidiary reliance on renewable energy, including companies back in-house. We will halt more solar panelling and a transition to the fire sale of NHS land and assets. electric paramedic vehicles, NHS fleet cars and hybrid ambulances. We will publish an infrastructure plan to return NHS England to the international average level of capital investment

32 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE We will introduce mandatory standards To support our transition to community for NHS in-patient food and will provide services, we will expand GP free hospital parking for patients, staff training places to provide resources for and visitors. 27 million more appointments each year and ensure community pharmacy is

supported. Joined-up Care

As medical technologies advance, Mental Health we will live with a wider array of chronic conditions. Health and care A Labour government will provide must become more joined-up, more an additional £1.6 billion a year to accessible, more personal and more ensure new standards for mental preventative. health are enshrined in the NHS constitution ensuring access to We will stop Tory plans to further treatments is on a par with that entrench the private sector delivery for physical health conditions. of health care under the cover of integration plans set out in the NHS Our mental health hospitals are not fit Long Term Plan. Instead we will join up, for purpose. Over 1,000 people with integrate and co-ordinate care through mental health problems face hospital public bodies. stays in old, dormitory-style hospital wards, while less than one in four A Labour government will develop a A&E departments have the facilities planned model of joined-up community to deal with people experiencing a care, enabling people to live longer lives mental health crisis. We will invest in better health in their own homes. We £2 billion to modernise hospital facilities will ensure the voices of local people and end the use of inappropriate, and NHS staff are heard in future out-of-area placements. developments of the health system. The legislation for detaining people We will allocate a greater proportion of with learning disabilities and mental overall funding to close-to-home health illnesses is outdated. We will implement services and build interdisciplinary, in full the recommendations set out in patient-focused services across review of the Mental primary care, mental health and social Health Act, so that people are given care. We will ensure patients in deprived choice, autonomy and the treatment and remote communities will have they need. better access to primary care services. We will also ensure those living with We will invest more in eating disorders long-term conditions can access the services and ensure NICE guidelines on care they need. eating disorders are implemented.

REBUILD OUR PUBLIC SERVICES 33 We will improve access to psychological breastfeeding support and therapies to ensure they deliver the introduce mental health assessments quality care patients deserve. We will in a maternal health check six weeks ensure provision of 24/7 crisis services. after birth.

Only one in four children and young We will invest in children’s oral health, people are able to receive help from a tackle childhood obesity and extend mental health professional. Our £845 the sugar tax to milk drinks. We will million plan for Healthy Young Minds will ban fast-food restaurants near schools more than double the annual spending and enforce stricter rules around the on children and adolescent mental advertising of junk food and levels of health services. salt in food. We will take actions to significantly reduce infant deaths and We will establish a network of open- ensure families who lose a baby receive access mental health hubs to enable appropriate bereavement support as more children to access mental health well as protections at work. and recruit almost 3,500 qualified counsellors to guarantee every child The re-emergence of measles is an access to school counsellors. indictment. We will urgently put in place a vaccination action plan to regain our measles-free status in WHO listings. Inequalities We will fully fund sexual health services Life expectancy is stalling and infant and roll out PrEP medication. mortality rates are increasing, especially We will address drug-related deaths, among those living in our most deprived alcohol-related health problems and communities. the adverse impacts of gambling A Labour government will target a as matters of public health, treated reduction in health inequalities with accordingly in expanded addiction- a comprehensive children’s health support services. Alcoholic drinks will strategy. We will introduce a Future be labelled with clear health warnings. Generations Well-being Act, enshrining We will review the evidence on health aims in all policies and a new minimum pricing. duty for NHS agencies to collaborate We will implement a Tobacco with directors of public health. Control Plan and fund smoking We will invest more than £1 billion in cessation services. public health and recruit 4,500 more health visitors and school nurses. We will increase mandated health visits, ensure new mothers can have access to

34 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE Workforce The Orkambi cystic fibrosis drug is just the latest example of patients held A Labour government will end the crisis to ransom by corporations charging in our health and care services, plan for extortionate prices for life-saving drugs. the future and guarantee real-terms pay rises every year. We will establish a generic drug company. If fair prices are rejected for Agenda for Change terms and patented drugs we will use the Patents conditions will be put into law Act provisions, compulsory licences and alongside safe staffing limits for all research exemptions to secure access staff. We will invest, train and develop to generic versions, and we will aim to NHS staff throughout their careers. increase the number of pharmaceutical We will introduce a training bursary jobs in the UK. for nurses, midwives and allied health professionals. We will We will play an active role in the remove the obstacles to ethical medical innovation model, ensuring international recruitment. rewards and incentives match the areas of greatest health need. A Labour government will review the tax and pension changes implemented by We will ensure that all parts of the the Tory government to ensure that the NHS, the treatment of patients, the workforce is fairly rewarded and that employment of staff and medicine services are not adversely affected. pricing are all fully excluded and protected from any international We will provide mental health trade deals. support for staff and create a working environment within the NHS that is We will clinically appropriate safe, flexible and free from harassment, prescription of medical cannabis. bullying or violence. We will abolish prescription charges in England.

Medicine

Under a Labour government the Social Care NHS will be at the forefront of the Social care funding cuts have left 1.5 development of genomics and cell million older people without the care therapies so that patients can benefit they need. from new treatments for cancer and dementia, whilst ensuring the Almost £8 billion has been lost from UK continues to lead in medical social care budgets since 2010. This is developments. having a profound impact on unpaid carers in this country, with 2.6 million

REBUILD OUR PUBLIC SERVICES 35 carers quitting their jobs to provide care funded care packages, improve the to family members. The current care standard of care provided to them and system is at risk of collapse. remove the distinction between health and care needs. A Labour government will build a comprehensive National Care The provision of additional care Service for England. We will provide packages also means we can support community-based, person-centred autistic people and people with support, underpinned by the principles learning disabilities to move out from of ethical care and independent living. inappropriate inpatient hospital settings We will provide free personal care, and provide support in their own homes beginning with investments to ensure Our National Care Service will work in that older people have their personal partnership with the NHS, ensuring care care needs met, with the ambition is delivered for people, not for profit. to extend this provision to all Contracts for providing care will not working-age adults. be awarded to organisations that do We will develop eligibility criteria that not pay their fair share of taxes and do ensures our service works for everyone, not meet our high standards of quality including people with complex care. Our focus will be on the ethical conditions like dementia. We will delivery of care that ensures growing ensure no one ever again needs to face public sector provision and providers catastrophic care costs of more than who meet standards of transparency, £100,000 for the care they need in old compliance and profit capping. age, which we will underscore with a Nearly one and a half million people lifetime cap on personal contributions work in the care sector, but there are to care costs. over 100,000 vacancies. Labour will We will also invest in other social care invest to end the social care crisis, end packages to reverse the damage done 15-minute care visits and provide care by Conservative cuts and provide workers with paid travel time, access to additional care packages to support training and an option to choose regular both older people and working-age hours. We will increase the Carer’s adults living independently in their Allowance for unpaid full-time carers. own homes.

Our investments in social care services will enable us to more than double the number of people receiving publicly

36 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE NATIONAL EDUCATION SERVICE

Education makes our But education isn’t just vital to our economy – it lets economy stronger, people develop their talents, overcomes injustices and our society richer inequalities and helps us understand each other and and our people more form social bonds. fulfilled. Whether it is The Conservatives have starved our education system businesses finding people of funding, transferring costs onto students, staff and with the right skills, a communities. They have lost sight of its value. tech start-up making our economy more dynamic From cutting budgets of schools, disproportionately or more people in better in deprived areas, to closing Sure Start centres paid work and able to and underfunding support for those with special contribute to public educational needs and disabilities, Conservative services, we all benefit policy has meant those in most need have lost out. from an educated society. That’s why our National Education Service will be at the heart of Labour’s plan for real change. It will provide for everyone throughout their lives and will nurture every child and adult to find a path that’s right for them, by promoting all types of learning, skill and knowledge – technical, vocational, academic and creative.

REBUILD OUR PUBLIC SERVICES 37 Early Years and to ensure that childcare provision accommodates the working patterns Early years education is vital to of all parents. children’s development. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds start We will improve child development by falling behind their peers before they transitioning to a qualified, graduate- even start school. Early years education led workforce. We value the experience also helps parents – usually mothers of current early years workers, and will – by providing a bridge between offer free training to the workforce to maternity/parental leave and school. attain these qualifications on the job.

But the current system falls far short Achieving this vision will require of what is needed. One thousand Sure significant investment. We will increase Start centres have closed since 2010, funding and end the fragmentation while the Tories’ so-called free childcare of the current system by funding offer is desperately underfunded providers directly, making things and excludes many of the most simpler and more sustainable for disadvantaged children. both parents and providers.

We will reverse cuts to Sure Start and We will recruit nearly 150,000 additional create a new service, Sure Start Plus, early years staff, including Special with enough centres to provide a Educational Needs Co-ordinators, and genuinely universal service, available introduce a national pay scale, driving in all communities, focused on the up pay for the overwhelmingly under-2s. female workforce.

Labour will radically reform early years Maintained nursery schools provide a provision, with a two-term vision proven, high-quality service but they to make high-quality early years are under threat from Tory cuts. We will education available for every child. We provide sustainable, long-term funding will also extend paid maternity leave to to secure their future. 12 months.

Within five years, all 2, 3 and 4-year- Schools olds will be entitled to 30 hours of free preschool education per week and Labour will make sure schools are access to additional hours at affordable, properly resourced with increased long- subsidised rates staggered with term funding, while introducing a fairer incomes. Labour will also work to extend funding formula that leaves no child childcare provision for 1-year-olds worse off. We will invest to upgrade schools that have fallen into disrepair.

38 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE Labour’s funding settlement will ensure educational needs and disabilities, who pupils are taught by a qualified teacher, have endured years of cuts and chaos. that every school is open for a full five Labour will provide the necessary days a week, and maximum class sizes funding for children with special of 30 for all primary school children. We educational needs and disabilities. will also fund more non-contact time Labour will end the ‘high stakes’ for teachers to prepare and plan. testing culture of schools by Schools have faced years of budget scrapping Key Stage 1 and 2 SATs cuts, leaving headteachers forced and baseline assessments, and to beg parents for money for basic refocussing assessment on supporting equipment. Despite promising to pupil progress. reverse their own cuts, the Tories latest We will introduce an Arts Pupil Premium funding announcement leaves 83% of to fund arts education for every schools still facing cuts next year. primary school child. We will review the Schools are being subjected to curriculum to ensure that it enriches intensified testing, inspection, league students and covers subjects such as tables and competition. These aren’t black history and continues to teach improving pupil achievement or issues like . Pupils will narrowing the attainment gap, but learn both the science of climate and are contributing to a growing teacher environmental emergency, and the recruitment and retention crisis. skills necessary to deal with them.

The narrowing curriculum is We will end the fragmentation and denying many children access to marketisation of our school system by modern languages, arts and music, bringing free schools and academies or technical and engineering skills back under control of the people who that will be essential in a world know them best – parents, teachers shaped by climate change. and local communities.

The academies system is Under our system: over-centralised, inefficient and • Budget and day-to-day decisions undemocratic. Parents, communities will be transferred back to schools, and even teachers are shut out of overseen by an accountable governing decisions about schools and vulnerable body with elected representatives. children are being let down. And there is no evidence that academies deliver • Responsibility for delivery of education and better results. support for young people will sit with local authorities, they will manage admissions. The Conservatives have failed a and have responsibility for school places, generation of children with special including the power to open schools

REBUILD OUR PUBLIC SERVICES 39 • Oversight and coordination, including We will bring back the School Support of continuous, peer-to-peer school Staff Negotiating Body and national improvement modelled on the London pay settlements for teachers. Challenge, will be carried out by We will close the tax loopholes enjoyed regional offices of the NES. by elite private schools and use that • All schools will be subject to a money to improve the lives of all common rulebook, set out in children, and we will ask the Social legislation. Justice Commission to advise on integrating private schools and creating We will replace Ofsted and transfer a comprehensive education system. responsibility for inspections to a new body, designed to drive school improvement. Further Education A new teacher supply service will tackle and Lifelong Learning the waste of funds going to private With automation and the Green supply teacher agencies thanks to Industrial Revolution bringing major the government’s failure to recruit and changes to industry, it is more retain experienced teachers. important than ever that people have We will take action to end ‘off-rolling’, the opportunity to retrain and upskill removing the perverse incentives for throughout their lives. schools to let pupils fall out of the Under the Tories, adult education system, by making schools accountable has undergone 10 years of managed for the outcomes of pupils who leave decline. England already faces a their rolls. shortage of people with higher-level We will properly regulate all education technical qualifications, and demand providers and reform alternative for these skills will only grow as we provision (AP) to ensure an excellent create new green jobs. education is the right of every child, and Instead of investing in people to improve the outcomes and life chances prepare them for the jobs of the future, of some of the most vulnerable children the Conservatives have slashed funding in society. and cut opportunities. We will ‘poverty-proof’ schools, Labour will ensure fairness and introducing meals for all sustainability in further education, primary school children, encouraging aligning the base rate of per-pupil breakfast clubs, and tackling the cost of funding in post-16 education with school uniforms. Key Stage 4, providing dedicated capital funding to expand provision

40 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE and bringing back the Education Higher Education Maintenance Allowance as the Welsh Under the Tories, universities are Labour Government has done. treated as private businesses, left Labour will make lifelong learning a at the mercy of market forces, while reality, giving everyone a free lifelong top salaries soar and students pay entitlement to: more for less. Tuition fees have trebled and maintenance grants have • Training up to Level 3. been scrapped, leaving the poorest • Six years training at Levels 4-6, with graduates with an average debt maintenance grants for disadvantaged of £57,000. learners. Labour will end the failed free-market We will introduce additional experiment in higher education, entitlements for workers in industries abolish tuition fees and bring that are significantly affected by back maintenance grants. We will industrial transition. fundamentally rethink the assessment of research and teaching quality, and We will make sure training delivers the develop a new funding formula for right skills by giving employers a role higher education that: in co-design and co-production of qualifications. • Ensures all public HE institutions have adequate funding for teaching We will restore funding for English for and research. Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) courses and restore and expand the • Widens access to higher Union Learning Fund, giving workers education and reverses the the right to accrue for decline of part-time learning. education and training. • Ends the casualisation of staff. Labour will reform existing careers We will transform the Office for advice, working towards an integrated Students from a market regulator to a information, advice and guidance body of the National Education Service, system that covers the entire NES. acting in the public interest. We will reverse the fragmentation We will introduce post-qualification and privatisation of further and adult admissions in higher education, education, incorporating it into a single and work with universities to ensure national system of regulation that contextual admissions are used across functions for education as our NHS the system. does for healthcare provision.

REBUILD OUR PUBLIC SERVICES 41 POLICE AND SECURITY

The primary duty Recorded crime has risen, including violent crimes of government is to like knife crime, which has risen to record high levels, keep people safe. Our up 80% in the last five years. Last year more than 11 communities were million crimes were recorded, and the proportion of endangered when the offences charged has fallen across all categories: Conservatives took violence, drugs, robbery, burglary, weapons possession 21,000 police officers and vehicle theft. Prosecutions have fallen to a record off our streets. low level. Some offences have been decriminalised in practice. Only 1.4% of reported rapes are prosecuted.

Crime rates reflect the society we live in. Conservative cuts to services have eroded the fabric of local communities. The rate of school exclusions has increased, as has social inequality – crime rates are driven by both.

Where the Conservatives have failed, a Labour government will take action to address the causes of crime and end the epidemic. We will invest in our communities and public services to build the stronger,

42 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE fairer society that keeps us all safer. The Tory approach to policing has Rebuilding our criminal justice services, been different: reckless, remote, we will focus on crime prevention and authoritarian, ineffective policing early interventions, giving people the on the cheap. It has led to what HM best chance of rehabilitation. Inspectorate of Constabulary described as dangerous, disturbing practices, We will rebuild our youth services and with investigations shelved, vulnerable guarantee young people’s access to victims let down and dangerous youth workers. We will invest in a youth suspects remaining at large. justice system in which schools, local authorities, health authorities and We will retain local democratic youth services work together to divert accountability for police forces and young people away from the pathways reform the police funding formula to towards crime. ensure sufficient, sustainable resources are fairly allocated. We will agree resources with the police authorities Police to combat crime and restore community policing by consent. A Labour government will invest in policing to prevent crime and make Effective police work requires the police our communities safer, and we will to serve their communities and work enforce the laws protecting police collaboratively with youth workers, and other emergency workers from mental health services, schools, drug violent assault. rehabilitation programmes and other public agencies. A police force working We will rebuild the whole police within our communities, with the workforce, recruiting more police capacity to gather local intelligence, officers, police community support is also the frontline of our domestic officers and police staff. We will security – the first eyes and ears of re-establish neighbourhood policing effective counter-terrorism. and recruit 2,000 more frontline officers than have been planned for by the We will work to eliminate institutional Conservatives. We will work with police biases against BAME communities. forces to invest in a modern workforce Proportionate stop-and-search based to tackle the rise in violent crime and on intelligence is a needed tool of cybercrime under the Tories. To deliver effective policing, but the use of these priorities, Labour will work with expanded powers means black and police and crime commissioners to Asian men are still more likely to be reform police funding and share new stopped and searched, poisoning resources fairly, and to ensure that relations between the police and the local needs are met. local communities they serve.

REBUILD OUR PUBLIC SERVICES 43 We will ensure better police training A Labour government will review our on domestic abuse and offences security strategies. arising from coercive control, as well We will review the Prevent programme as historical abuses and other crimes to assess both effectiveness and neglected by the reduced forces potential to alienate communities operating under Tory austerity. and consider alternatives including A Labour government will establish a safeguarding programmes to protect Royal Commission to develop a public those vulnerable to the recruitment health approach to substance misuse, propaganda and ideologies of the focusing on harm reduction rather than far-right and others who promote terror criminalisation. as a political strategy.

We will introduce minimum legal We will review the Protect programme standards of service for all victims to ensure that public authorities take of crime. appropriate security measures, without alienating the communities they serve.

We will evaluate the mobile phone Security trials with the aim of introducing an We will address the failure of the emergency alert system. Conservatives to take effective We will use our diplomatic services, measures against a growing problem our aid budgets and our international of extreme or violent radicalisation. standing to promote peaceful solutions We will ensure closer counter terrorism to conflicts and tackle the risks arising co-ordination between the police from poverty, natural catastrophes and and the security services, combining population displacements. Our national neighbourhood expertise with security is linked to global threats. We international intelligence. will respect international law and avoid We will ensure the powers exercised by needless military interventions. the security services are proportionate Our security co-operation and used in accordance with human arrangements with EU neighbours rights. We will review the circumstances are essential for our safety. If the requiring judicial warrant. We will British people confirm their decision ensure agencies are accountable and to leave, we will prioritise agreement strengthen the powers of the Joint of a new UK-EU Security Treaty. Intelligence and Security Committee. We will constrain the right of the Prime Minister to suppress publication of committee reports.

44 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE Cybersecurity Border Security

Cybercrime and cyberwarfare are Our border security prevents serious growing, all around the world. Every crimes including child abduction, aspect of our lives, from the NHS to people trafficking, smuggling of drugs our nuclear facilities, from transport and guns, terrorism and modern systems to communications networks day slavery. The Tories have further is vulnerable. weakened our borders, cutting another 200 jobs over the last four years. A Labour government, ever more They have failed to deliver exit checks. dependent on digital technology, In place of an effective will overhaul our cybersecurity by they have required landlords, teachers creating a co-ordinating minister and and medical staff to work as unpaid regular reviews of cyber-readiness. immigration officers, creating a hostile We will review the role and remit of environment. the National Cyber Security Centre to A Labour government will review determine whether it should be given our border controls to make them powers as an auditing body, with the more effective. ability to issue warnings to private and public sector organisations and designate risk.

We will also review the structures and roles of the National Crime Agency, to strengthen the response to all types of economic crime, including cybercrime and fraud, and ensure a modern, technologically advanced police service that has the capacity and skills to combat online crime, supported by a new national strategy on cybercrime and fraud.

REBUILD OUR PUBLIC SERVICES 45 JUSTICE

Smarter justice requires We will champion a joined-up approach, fostering cross-government action close working relationships between criminal justice to reduce the impact agencies with education authorities, health services of adverse childhood and others by establishing violence-reduction units experiences and to break and ensuring vulnerable people get the support they the vicious cycle of need by boosting public health, mental health and poverty, inequality early years services. Prison is not the best place to and crime. address the drug addictions, mental illnesses and debts that lead many people into crime.

The crisis in our criminal justice system has left communities less safe, victims less supported and people less able to defend their rights. Labour will defend the rule of law.

Cutting thousands of prison officers has driven record levels of prison violence. A Labour government will restore total prison officer numbers to 2010 levels, and phase out dangerous lone working. We will bring PFI prisons back in-house and there will be no new

46 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE private prisons. We will tackle the prison We will ensure legal aid for inquests maintenance backlog and develop a into deaths in state custody and the long-term estate strategy. preparation of judicial review cases. We will consult on the civil legal aid The Ministry of Justice’s own means-test levels and act on the evidence shows tens of thousands of criminal legal aid review. crimes could be prevented if robust community sentences replace short We will defend workers’ ability to prison sentences. We will set new recover legal representation costs standards for community sentences from negligent employers. and introduce a presumption against We will keep the right for workers to prison sentences of six months be represented and recover their or less for non-violent and costs in cases of employer negligence non-sexual offences. leading to injury at work. We will review We will invest in proven alternatives to the eligibility criteria for the criminal custody, including women’s centres, injuries compensation scheme. expand problem-solving courts and A Labour government will halt plug the funding gap in the female court closures and cuts to staff, and offender strategy. We will further undertake a review of the courts reform consider the evidence for effective programme. We will facilitate a more alternatives and rehabilitation of representative judiciary while upholding prolific offenders. its independence, and review funding A Labour government will reunify for the Crown Prosecution Service. probation and guarantee a publicly run, We will tackle the disproportionate locally accountable probation service. levels of BAME children in custody, Under Labour, probation staff and review the youth custody estate, professional standards will once again strengthen youth courts and build be properly valued. on the Lammy Review. Legal aid cuts mean essential legal Violence against women and girls is help is too often denied. To help people unacceptable as is many women’s enforce their rights, we will restore all experience of criminal justice agencies. early legal aid advice, including for We will set new standards for tackling housing, social security, family and domestic and sexual abuse and immigration cases. violence, and appoint a Commissioner We will recruit hundreds of new for Violence against Women and Girls. community lawyers, promote public We will establish an independent review legal education and build an expanded into shamefully low rape prosecution network of law centres. rates. We will establish a National

REBUILD OUR PUBLIC SERVICES 47 Refuge Fund, ensure financial stability for rape crisis centres and reintroduce a Domestic Abuse Bill.

We will improve the safety of the family court system for domestic violence victims and prohibit their cross-examination by their abuser. We will introduce protections for victims of so-called revenge porn. Labour will introduce a no-fault divorce procedure. We will uphold women’s reproductive rights and decriminalise .

We will establish public inquiries into historical injustices including blacklisting and Orgreave, and ensure the second phase of the Grenfell Inquiry has the confidence of all those affected, especially the bereaved families and survivors. We will also consider a public inquiry in the case of Zane Gbangbola.

We will require judicial warrants for undercover operations and retain the Mitting Inquiry into undercover policing.

We will release all papers on the Shrewsbury 24 trials and 37 Cammell Laird shipyard workers and introduce a Public Accountability Bill. We will ensure fair compensation for the victims of contaminated blood products across the UK.

48 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE COMMUNITIES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Labour will reverse the While those who make decisions in Whitehall can seem Tory decade of austerity distant and detached, our local councillors live among for local government and us, shopping on the same high street, using the same aim to restore council parks and leisure centres and sending their children to spending powers to 2010 the same schools. Thriving local councils are vital to levels over the lifetime of Labour’s democratic transformation of the Parliament. the economy.

Councils are the collective voice of local communities and are on the frontline in delivering many essential public services.

Tory cuts, which have been deliberately targeted at the poorest areas of the country, have plunged our councils into crisis and pushed many services to breaking point. Decades of privatisation and outsourcing have hollowed out council capacity, taken money out of communities and undermined democratic accountability.

REBUILD OUR PUBLIC SERVICES 49 We will act to bring services – from bin protected, that safety standards are collections to management of local maintained and improved, and that leisure centres – back in-house within local authority trading standards the next Parliament, improving service departments and other consumer quality, saving money and ensuring the protection agencies have the resources people who deliver vital local services to enforce those rights and standards are treated decently. We will stop Crown Post Office closures Rural councils deliver public services and bring back into public differently, and this needs to be ownership at the earliest opportunity, reflected in funding allocation reuniting it with the Post Office and mechanisms. We will introduce a ‘rural- creating a publicly owned Post Bank proofing’ process so that all our laws, run through the post office network policies and programmes consider their to ensure every community has easy impact on rural communities. access to face-to-face, trusted and affordable banking. Where local areas experience a sharp rise in demand for services, we will make A Business Development Agency will be council funding more reactive, and will based in the Post Bank, providing free work with councils to establish such a support and advice on how to launch, fund to meet changing circumstances. manage and grow a business.

Our high streets are being decimated Pubs are community hubs but 18 are by store closures and jobs losses. closing each week in Britain. Labour will High streets are more than places to list pubs as Assets of Community Value shop, they are places we go for culture, so community groups have the first company and character. We will revive chance to buy local pubs when they high streets by stopping bank branch are under threat. closures, banning ATM charges and We will ensure libraries are preserved giving local government new powers for future generations and updated to put empty shops to good use. with Wi-Fi and computers. We will Business rates are causing real issues reintroduce library standards so that for high-street retailers and others. government can assess and guide A Labour government will review councils in delivering the best the option of a on possible service. commercial landlords as an As well as the presumption to insource alternative and develop a retail public services, we will build community sector industrial strategy. wealth by giving communities the We will make sure the rights of powers and resources they need to consumers are enhanced and keep public spending circulating in

50 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE the local economy, rather than being of foster parents and regulation of sucked offshore to corporate tax semi-supported housing, to ensure havens. We will extend community we meet the needs of every child. control in the private sector by We will rebuild early intervention supporting local and community services and replace the Troubled businesses. We will give a new Families programme with a Stronger Co-operative Development Agency Families programme, refocused on a mission to double the size of the long-term support to reduce the risk co-operative sector. of children going into care. Labour will put the voices of local We will protect and build on people at the heart of planning. We will Staying Put for over-18s in care rebalance power in the planning system and the Adoption Support Fund. by giving local government greater freedom to set planning fees and by requiring the climate and environmental emergency to be factored into all planning decisions.

Young people have been let down by the Conservatives. At least 750 youth centres have closed since 2012. Too many young people now have nowhere to go, nothing to do and no one to help them with their problems. Labour will build a properly funded, professionally staffed National Youth Service, and will guarantee every young person has access to local, high-quality youth work.

Vulnerable children have suffered most, with many left waiting until crisis point for support. Councils are having to meet the needs of more at-risk children with lower funding.

Labour will launch a wholesale review of the care system, including kinship care, considering national standards such as a register

REBUILD OUR PUBLIC SERVICES 51 FIRE AND RESCUE

The Conservatives have A Labour government will halt the cuts and further cut 11,500 firefighter jobs invest in our Fire and Rescue Service, recruiting at and closed dozens of fire least 5,000 new firefighters. We will learn lessons from stations. Response times the public inquiries into Grenfell and earlier disasters. have got slower and lives We will establish a broadly based implementation have been put at risk. taskforce, but will not wait for final recommendations to make urgently needed changes. We will ensure dedicated fire controls under Fire and Rescue Service governance and provide resources for a public Fire and Rescue College to ensure that necessary training, research and planning is undertaken.

We will conduct a review of the Fire and Rescue Service, evaluating safe staffing levels and consulting on national minimum standards. We will establish in law a standards body for fire prevention, protection and intervention, with representation at all levels. We will reinstate separate governance arrangements for Fire and Rescue Service and police services. We will give fire services the duty to co- ordinate the emergency response to floods locally.

52 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE DIGITAL, CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT

Digital broadband infrastructure and retail broadband work. Digital and technological advancements bring challenges, BDI will roll out the remaining 90–92% but also huge opportunities. In the of the full-fibre network, and acquire age of AI and automation, digital necessary access rights to existing connectivity will underpin our future assets. BBS will coordinate the delivery economy. We will need world-class of free broadband in tranches as digital infrastructure in which everyone the full-fibre network is rolled out, can share. beginning with the communities worst served by existing broadband networks. Labour will deliver free full-fibre Taxation of multinationals, including broadband to all by 2030. tech giants, will pay for the operating We will establish British Broadband, costs of the public full-fibre network. with two arms: British Digital The plan will boost jobs, tackle regional Infrastructure (BDI) and the British inequality and improve quality of Broadband Service (BBS). We will bring life as part of a mission to connect the broadband-relevant parts of BT the country. into public ownership, with a jobs We will enforce a legal duty of care to guarantee for all workers in existing protect our children online, impose fines

REBUILD OUR PUBLIC SERVICES 53 on companies that fail on online abuse We will work with trade unions and and empower the public with a Charter employers to make creative jobs of Digital Rights. accessible for all, ensuring diversity in these industries so that everyone sees themselves represented on Culture screen and on stage. We will review the copyright framework to ensure Britain’s thriving arts, culture and fair remuneration for artists and creative industries drive investments content creators. and encourage tourism.

A Labour government will open up career opportunities in these industries Media for everyone and consult on ways to A Labour government will ensure a address the gender imbalance in the healthy future for all our public service digital creative industries. broadcasters, including BBC Alba and We will introduce an Arts Pupil Premium S4C. We will protect free TV licences for to every primary school in England – over-75s. a £160 million annual boost for schools A free and fair press is vital to protecting to ensure creative and arts education democracy and holding the powerful to is embedded in secondary education, account. and providing a pathway to grow our thriving creative sector. We will address misconduct and the unresolved failures of corporate We will invest in the towns and governance raised by the second stage communities neglected for too long, of the abandoned Leveson Inquiry. We with a £1 billion Cultural Capital Fund will take steps to ensure that to transform libraries, museums and is better able to safeguard a healthy galleries across the country. plurality of media ownership and to We will make the distribution of put in place clearer rules on who is fit National Lottery funding more and proper to own or run TV and radio transparent to help communities stations. We will take action to address get their fair share of project funding. the monopolistic hold the tech giants have on advertising revenues and will We will maintain free entry to support vital local newspapers and museums, because everyone should media outlets. have access to our shared heritage. Building on the success of the UK City We will consult media-sector workers of Culture, we will launch a Town of and trade unions to establish an inquiry Culture competition. into the ‘fake news’ undermining trust in

54 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE media, democracy and public debate, We will add the ICC Cricket World and on a legal right of public interest Cup to the list of crown jewel sporting defence for journalists. events that are broadcast free-to-air.

We will commission an independent review into discrimination in sport. Sport

Sport enriches our lives, binds communities together and helps Gambling us all to stay healthy. A Labour government will curb Sport must be accessible and run in the gambling advertising in sports and interests of those who participate in it introduce a new Gambling Act fit for and love it. the digital age, establishing gambling limits, a levy for problem gambling In football, the professional game funding and mechanisms for consumer has become divided between the compensations. extremes of the very rich and the very poor with clubs in Bury and Bolton facing collapse. A Labour government Civic Society will examine the state of the game, its governance and regulation, its In the years of austerity it was ownership rules and the support and non-government organisations that funding of the clubs that are vital to often held the social fabric of our local communities. We will review the society together, protecting our ‘fit and proper person test’ for club communities from even greater owners and directors and ensure that harm and providing precisely targeted supporters’ trusts have a proper role so support. As we rebuild our public that the professional game is properly services, we will support and maintain run for all its fans and all its clubs. the social capital values of these organisations. A Labour government will legislate for accredited football supporters’ trusts to be able to appoint and remove at least two club directors and purchase shares when clubs change hands. We will regulate in stadiums and ensure that a proportion of the Premier League’s television rights income is spent on football facilities.

REBUILD OUR PUBLIC SERVICES 55 56 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE TACKLE POVERTY AND INEQUALITY

59 WORK 65 WOMEN AND EQUALITIES 70 MIGRATION 72 SOCIAL SECURITY 77 HOUSING 81 CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES

57

WORK

Work should provide Under the Tories, pay has stagnated while insecurity a decent life for all, and inequality are rising. guaranteeing not just Work no longer guarantees a way out of poverty. dignity and respect in the Of 14.3 million people in poverty, nine million live in workplace, but also the families where at least one adult works. Real wages income and leisure time are still lower than before the financial crisis, while to allow for a fulfilling life dividends paid to shareholders are up 85%. outside it. Labour will eradicate in-work poverty in our first term by tackling the structural causes of poverty and inequality, such as low pay and high living costs, while raising the floor provided by our social safety net.

Too many people have found themselves in a spiral of debt as wages fell and housing costs . Labour will cap the total amount that can be paid in overdraft fees or interest on a loan.

We will rapidly introduce a Real Living Wage of at least £10 per hour for all workers aged 16 and over, and use

TACKLE POVERTY AND INEQUALITY 59 savings to public finances to help small We will tackle late payments that businesses manage the extra cost. leave small businesses and the self-employed waiting months to We will give workers a stake in the be paid, including banning late payers companies they work for – and a share from public procurement. of the profits they help create – by requiring large companies to set up Inclusive Ownership Funds (IOFs). Up Ministry for Employment Rights to 10% of a company will be owned collectively by employees, with Throughout history, working people dividend payments distributed equally in Britain have improved their lives by among all, capped at £500 a year, coming together to demand rights and the rest being used to top up the and protections. Even after decades Climate Apprenticeship Fund. The cap in which workers’ rights have been will rise to ensure that no more than cut back and their unions’ capacity 25% of dividends raised by IOFs are to defend them have been slashed, redistributed in this way. the Tories believe that workers’ terms and conditions should be dictated by And we will explore other innovative employers on a ‘take it or leave it’ basis. ways of responding to low pay, including a pilot of Universal We are proud of the trade union Basic Income. movement’s historic achievements in giving people a voice at work through Growing numbers of the workforce are collective action. It is not just part of our self-employed. While for some this history; it is also part of our future. Only brings freedom and autonomy, it can by shifting the balance of power back also bring insecurity. Self-employed towards workers will we achieve decent people will benefit from a broad range wages, security and dignity at work. of our policies, from free childcare and full-fibre broadband to face-to-face The next Labour government will lending and business support through transform people’s lives for the better our Post Bank. through the biggest extension of workers’ rights in history. We will also seek to develop tailored support and protections for the self- We will give working people a voice employed, including: collective income at the Cabinet table by establishing protection insurance schemes, annual a Ministry for Employment Rights. income assessments for those on We will start to roll out sectoral Universal Credit, and better access to collective bargaining across the mortgages and pension schemes. economy, bringing workers and employers together to agree legal

60 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE minimum standards on a wide range of • Increasing wages through sectoral issues, such as pay and working hours, collective bargaining. that every employer in the sector must • Requiring breaks during shifts to follow. Sectoral collective bargaining will be paid. increase wages and reduce inequality. This will also stop good employers • Requiring cancelled shifts to be paid being undercut by bad employers. and proper notice for changes in hours. We will tackle insecurity by: • Giving all workers the right to flexible • Giving everyone full rights from day working. one on the job. • Extending statutory maternity pay • Strengthening protections for from nine to 12 months. whistleblowers and rights against unfair dismissal for all workers, with • Doubling paternity leave from two extra protections for pregnant women, weeks to four and increasing statutory those going through the menopause paternity pay. and terminally ill workers. • Introducing statutory bereavement • Ending bogus self-employment leave, guaranteeing workers time and creating a single status of off to grieve the loss of close family ‘worker’ for everyone apart from members or following miscarriage. those genuinely self-employed in • Introducing four new bank holidays business on their own account, so that celebrating our four patron saints’ employers can not evade workers’ days. rights; and banning overseas-only recruitment practices. • Reviewing family-friendly employment rights, including rights to respond to • Introducing a legal right to collective family emergencies. consultation on the implementation of new technology in workplaces. We will make sure people are treated equally at work by: • Banning zero-hour contracts and strengthening the law so that those • Requiring employers to devise and who work regular hours for more than implement plans to eradicate the 12 weeks will have a right to a regular gender pay gap – and pay inequalities contract, reflecting those hours. underpinned by race and/or disability – or face fines. We will help people balance work and family life by: • Requiring employers to maintain workplaces free of harassment, including harassment by third parties.

TACKLE POVERTY AND INEQUALITY 61 • Increasing protection against for trade unions to help them win a redundancy for people wherever better deal for working people. they work. • Simplify the law around union • Giving statutory rights to equalities recognition. representatives. • Give union reps adequate time off • Setting up a Royal Commission to for union duties. bring health (including mental health) We will develop collective income- and safety legislation up to date. protection insurance schemes for the • Ensuring that public-facing workers self-employed. We will introduce a are protected by toughening the law maximum workplace temperature to against abuse and violence. protect workers and require employers to take counteracting measures. • Banning unpaid internships. For years, the UK has been in breach We will remove unfair and unnecessary of our international obligations. We restrictions on trade unions, allowing will bring UK law into line with the people to come together and speak up International Labour Organisation on issues that affect them at work. standards it has ratified, so Britain leads We will: the world, instead of engaging in a race to the bottom. • Allow trade unions to use secure electronic and workplace ballots.

• Remove unnecessary restrictions on . Time off to rest, relax and be with family • Strengthen and enforce trade unions’ is essential to a happy and fulfilling life, right of entry to workplaces to but workers in the UK put in some of the organise, meet and represent their longest hours in Europe. members and to recruit. Labour will tackle excessive working • Ban union-busting, strengthen hours. Within a decade we will reduce protection of trade union average full-time weekly working hours representatives against unfair to 32 across the economy, with no dismissal and union members from loss of pay, funded by productivity intimidation, harassment, threats and increases. blacklisting. We will meet this target by: • Repeal anti-trade union legislation • Ending the opt-out provision for including the Trade Union Act 2016 the EU Working Time Directive and and create new rights and freedoms enforcing working-time regulations.

62 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE • Setting up an independent Working Rewriting the Rules Time Commission to advise on Social justice also means levelling the raising minimum holiday entitlements playing field between small and big and reducing maximum weekly business, and ensuring that democracy working time. and accountability are valued across • Mandating bargaining councils to society, including in the private sector. negotiate reductions in working time. Businesses are the heartbeat of our • Investing to increase productivity economy, creating jobs, wealth and and making sure workers share the innovations. benefits. But the upper echelons of corporate We will keep restrictions on Sunday Britain have been corrupted by a trading in place and review unpaid culture in which the long-term health . of a company is sacrificed for a quick buck for a few: a short-term culture Enforcement has seen some treasured companies asset-stripped, leaving workers, small Rights don’t mean anything unless business suppliers and pensioners in they’re enforced, but that is not the lurch. Too often, the link between happening under the Tories. reward and long-term performance is That doesn’t just hurt workers who lose broken for short-term greed. out, it is also bad for employers who Labour will take on short-termism and follow the law and are undercut by corporate greed, making sure good unscrupulous competitors prepared businesses are rewarded, not undercut. to break it. We will rewrite the rules of the economy Strong trade unions are the best and and ensure everyone plays by them. most effective way to enforce rights at We will amend the Companies Act, work. Labour will also introduce a new, requiring companies to prioritise unified Workers’ Protection Agency long-term growth while strengthening to enforce workplace rights, including protections for stakeholders, including the Real Living Wage. It will be given smaller suppliers and pension funds. extensive powers to inspect workplaces We will tackle late payments that leave and bring prosecutions and civil small businesses waiting months to be proceedings on workers’ behalf. paid, including banning late payers from We will keep employment tribunals public procurement. free, extend their powers, and For small businesses, we will ensure no introducenew Labour Courts with a quarterly reporting for businesses below stronger role for people with industrial the VAT threshold. experience on panels.

TACKLE POVERTY AND INEQUALITY 63 We will require one-third of boards to of what class or postcode they are born be reserved for elected worker-directors into, or the colour of their skin. and give them more control over But that’s impossible when you cannot executive pay – because when those meet your most basic needs and have who depend on a company have a say to choose between eating and heating in running it, that company generally your home. Britain is one of the richest does better and lasts longer. countries in the world, but under the We will introduce a broader ‘public Tories millions of people can’t make interest test’ to prevent hostile ends meet. takeovers and asset-stripping They tell us we shouldn’t care about weakening our industrial base and inequality, because social mobility destroying treasured home-grown allows those who work hard to get companies. And we will give workers on. But nobody becomes a billionaire a voice on public bodies such as the through hard work alone, and as Competition and Markets Authority. inequality has grown, it has become We will let struggling companies go into more entrenched. protective administration, so they can For Labour, the true measure of fairness be sold as a going concern rather than is not social mobility but social justice. collapsing into insolvency. Implicit in the notion of social mobility Audits are vital to corporate is the idea that poverty and inequality accountability, but the auditing industry are acceptable provided some people is dominated by a few players riddled can climb the social ladder. with conflicts of interest. Labour will separate audit and accounting activities Social justice, on the other hand, in major firms and impose more robust demands that we end poverty, reduce rules on auditors. inequality and create a society in which the conditions for a fulfilling life are We will tackle regulatory capture and available to everyone. streamline regulation by creating a new Business Commission, responsive to Labour will replace the Social Mobility parliamentary select committees. Commission with a Social Justice Commission, based in the Treasury, with wide-ranging powers to hold us, Social Justice Commission and future governments, to account.

Labour will usher in a new era of social justice in Britain. Everyone in our society should be allowed to flourish regardless

64 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE WOMEN AND EQUALITIES

Labour is the party of The Conservatives have failed to tackle society’s equality, committed to burning injustices. Instead, they have inflicted injustice achieving a world free after injustice on women, Black, Asian and Minority from all forms of bigotry Ethnic (BAME) and LGBT+ communities and disabled and discrimination. people. Over 85% of the burden of Tory/Lib Dem cuts Whether campaigning has fallen on the shoulders of women. on the streets or Labour will create a new Department for Women passing legislation in and Equalities, with a full-time Secretary of State, government, Labour responsible for ensuring all our policies and laws are is the only party to equality-impact assessed in order to deliver a fairer consistently stand with society for women and all under-represented groups. women, disabled people, We will establish a modernised National Women’s people from ethnic Commission as an independent advisory body to minority backgrounds contribute to a Labour government. and LGBT+ communities. We are guided by our firm commitment to the Human Rights Act and Convention on Human Rights that have been consistently attacked by the Conservatives. We will ratify both the Istanbul Convention on preventing domestic abuse and the ILO Convention on Violence and Harassment at work.

TACKLE POVERTY AND INEQUALITY 65 We will put class at the heart of Britain’s dismissal of pregnant women without equality agenda and create a new prior approval of the inspectorate. ground for discrimination on the basis • Transform the workplace and require of socio-economic disadvantage. all large employers to have flexible working, including a menopause policy, and consider changes to Women sickness and absence practices. Labour will put women at the heart of • Enable positive action for recruitment our government and programme. Next to roles where employers can justify year marks the 50th anniversary of the the need for more diversity and Equal Pay Act, yet women still earn 13% introduce a right for all workers to less than men. Labour will take action to request flexibility over their hours from close the gender pay gap by 2030. the first day of employment. We will also: • Ensure that the single-sex-based • Deliver gender pay equality by making exemptions contained in the Equality the state responsible for enforcing Act 2010 are understood and fully equal pay legislation for the first time. enforced in service provision. The new Workers’ Protection Agency • Create a safer society for women working with HMRC will ensure that and prioritise domestic abuse as a employers take equal pay seriously health issue, introduce 10 days of paid and take positive action to close the leave for survivors of domestic abuse, gender pay gap. Women will no longer and ensure women’s refuges receive be left to take enforcement action by the long-term sustainable funding themselves through the courts. they need. Misogyny and violence • Require all employers with over 250 against women and girls will become employees to obtain government hate crimes. certification on gender equality or face • Increase women’s representation further auditing and fines. By the end across parliament by building on of 2020, we will lower the threshold to the Equality Act, passed by the workplaces with 50 employees, whilst last Labour government, and enact providing the necessary additional Section 106 so that all political parties support for small businesses. publish diversity data about electoral • Revolutionise parents’ rights by candidates. increasing paid maternity leave from nine to 12 months, doubling paternity leave to four weeks and extending pregnancy protection. We will ban the

66 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE Race Equality access to finance, which many BAME business owners face; and take action Achieving racial equality is a bedrock to ensure that BAME and women Labour value. It has never been more business owners have access to important than in the current climate. government contracts and spending. We are proud of the way our country has been shaped by the contributions, • Implement recommendations of cultures and values of people from the Lammy Review to address the around the world. disparity of treatment and outcomes for BAME people within the criminal The Conservatives have fanned the justice system. flames of racism, using difference to divide. They have made BAME • Create an Emancipation Educational people pay the price for their austerity Trust to educate around migration and project and scapegoated refugees and colonialism, and to address the legacy migrants. Never was this starker than of slavery and teach how it interrupted with their ‘hostile environment’, leading a rich and powerful black history which to the scandalous treatment of the is also British history. Windrush generation. Hate crime has On religious discrimination, we will: more than doubled in the last five years. This is a wake-up call for all of us. • Strengthen protection for religious communities and amend the law Labour will ensure a pathway to to include attacks on places of economic inclusion for all, putting worship (including synagogues, an end to all forms of racism and temples, mosques and churches) discrimination in our economy and as a specific aggravated offence. society. Inclusion will be at the heart of its programme for government. • Review current levels of funding for and access to the Places of Worship We will: Protective Security Funding Scheme, • Seek to end the politics of hate and maintain funding in real terms for the commission an independent review Community Security Trust, and consult into the threat of far-right extremism on giving it statutory protection to and how to tackle it. ensure that religious communities have the support they need. • Put wealth and power in the hands of the many, extend pay-gap reporting to BAME groups and tackle pay Disability with Dignity discrimination on the basis of race. Over the last 10 years, through • Commit our National Investment a catalogue of punitive welfare Bank to addressing discrimination in policies, the dignity of people with

TACKLE POVERTY AND INEQUALITY 67 disabilities has been degraded by the leave, paid and recorded separately Conservatives. Not one, but two UN from sick leave. reports describe the government having • Recommend that the Equality committed ‘systematic violations’ of the and Human Rights Commission rights of disabled people – while their prepare a specific code of practice families have been ‘driven to breaking on reasonable adjustments to point’ by cuts to social care. supplement existing codes. This More disabled people are now living in will provide an appropriate balance poverty, and people have died because between flexibility and clarity on of this government’s choice to make how ‘reasonable’ cost is determined. the most vulnerable pay for tax cuts The code will also set timescales for the few. Labour will end this cruelty, for implementation of reasonable restoring the protections that disabled adjustments to end the long and people and their families – many of distressing delays experienced by whom shoulder the cost of their care disabled workers. – should expect in one of the richest • Reinstate the Access to Elected Office countries in the world. Fund to enable disabled people to run Labour supports the principle of for elected office. ‘nothing about us without us’. • Adopt a British Sign Language Act, We will: giving BSL full legal recognition in law.

• Champion the social model of We will work with employers, trade disability throughout government. unions and public services to improve Through our new Department for awareness of neurodiversity in the Women and Equalities, we will workplace and in society. ensure that disabled people can be independent and equal in society, with choice and control over their own lives. LGBT+ Equality

• Transform the workplace for disabled Labour has a proud history of standing people by requiring that all employers shoulder to shoulder with LGBT+ be trained to better support them, people. We abolished , while introducing mandatory disability equalised the age of consent, created pay-gap reporting for companies with civil partnerships, and only with over 250 employees. Labour votes could equal marriage become law. Labour is committed to • End disability discrimination and reforming the Gender Recognition Act update the Equality Act to introduce 2004 to introduce self-declaration for new specific duties including disability transgender people, but we are not

68 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE complacent about the culture shift • Respond fast and firmly wherever required to make LGBT+ inclusivity a LGBT+ people face violence reality. The Conservatives have been or persecution internationally slow to understand the scale of abuse and appoint a dedicated global and discrimination LGBT+ people ambassador to the Foreign Office on continue to face in our society. LGBT+ issues.

Labour will eliminate remaining areas Labour will work with organisations and of discrimination in law, ensuring charities already making the UK a more that LGBT+ people can live in safety equal and fairer society and together and dignity. we will build a country for the many, not the few. We will:

• Put LGBT+ equality at the heart of government, ensuring our public services are LGBT+ inclusive and delivering on the national LGBT Action Plan.

• Take steps to safeguard LGBT+ rights inside or outside the EU, such as retaining and promoting the Human Rights Act.

• Tackle the homelessness and rough sleeping crisis in the UK, ensuring that all strategies and services are tailored to understand needs unique to LGBT+ homeless people, particularly young people who make up a disproportionate number of our currently homeless people.

• Provide sufficient funding for schools to deliver mandatory LGBT+ inclusive relationships and sex education.

• Fully fund sexual health services and roll out PrEP medication.

TACKLE POVERTY AND INEQUALITY 69 MIGRATION

A Labour government Our immigration system must allow us to recruit the will establish a humane people we need, and to welcome them and their immigration system families. Our work visa system must fill any skills or and end the ‘hostile labour shortages that arise. The movement of people environment’ that caused around the world has enriched our society, the our economy and our culture. of British citizens being We will take decisive action to regulate the labour deported. Instead, our market to stop the undercutting of wages and system will be built on conditions, and the exploitation of all workers including human rights and aimed migrant workers. It is the actions of bad bosses and at meeting the skills and successive Conservative governments that have driven labour shortages that down wages and working terms and conditions. Labour exist in our economy and will ensure all workers have full and equal rights from public services. day one, with a Real Living Wage for all.

The Conservative policy of pursuing net migration targets has undermined our economy and our public services, refusing entry to essential key workers including nurses. It has created a hostile environment

70 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE within our communities, encouraged benefits that free movement has the demonisation of migrants and brought both in terms of EU citizens enabled the callous use of three million here and UK citizens abroad – and we residents as bargaining chips in our will seek to protect those rights. negotiations over EU withdrawal. In accordance with our values and Moreover, the Tories have not once domestic laws, we will uphold the met their own targets. Their migration right to a family life for British, EU and policies are a complete and damaging non-EU residents alike. We will end failure, whichever way they are the deportation of family members of looked at. people entitled to be here and end the minimum income requirements which We will scrap the 2014 Immigration separate families. Act introduced by the Tories with their Liberal Democrat coalition partners. We are for a levelling up of rights, not a Refugees race to the bottom. We will not tolerate a two-tier system for those entitled to Refugees are victims of wars, be here. environmental catastrophes, famine or persecution. The Windrush scandal continues to create new victims. We will This government has failed its end its injustices and provide fair international legal obligations to compensation to those who have refugees and to allow people to unfairly suffered. exercise their rights to seek asylum.

We will end indefinite detention, review A Labour government will uphold those the alternatives to the inhumane rights and meet those obligations. conditions of detention centres, and We will work with others to resume close Yarl’s Wood and Brook House, rescue missions in the Mediterranean, from which immediate savings would co-operate with the French authorities contribute towards a fund of £20 million to put an end to the horrific camps, to support the survivors of modern and establish safe and legal routes for slavery, people trafficking and domestic asylum seekers. violence. We will ensure justice for Once here, refugees will have the right migrant domestic workers and restore to work, access to public services the overseas domestic workers’ visa. and will be treated humanely by If we remain in the EU, freedom of government at all levels. movement would continue. If we leave, it will be subject to negotiations, but we recognise the social and economic

TACKLE POVERTY AND INEQUALITY 71 SOCIAL SECURITY

Labour holds social While Labour wants a society in which people care for security in the same one another, the Tories are trying to pitch us against esteem as our health and each other. education systems. Under the Tories, the social security system has lost It is there to help each sight of its purpose. Poverty has become endemic, of us in times of need. the glue that binds our society together has come If someone falls on hard unstuck and, in the words of the United Nations, – because they UK’s social safety net ‘has been deliberately removed lose their job, get sick or and replaced with a harsh and uncaring ethos’. lose a loved one – Labour will help them live with The cruelty and heartlessness of the Tories has made dignity and provide the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) a support to get them symbol of fear. When people feel the DWP is more back on their feet. about harassment than a helping hand, something has gone seriously wrong. Labour will completely change this culture, replacing the DWP on day one with a Department for Social Security, which will be there to help and support people, not punish and police them.

72 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE We will put children at the heart of We will end the five-week wait by everything we do, developing a cross- introducing an interim payment governmental National Strategy for based on half an estimated monthly Childhood focusing on health, security, entitlement. We will immediately well-being and poverty. We will give suspend the Tories’ vicious sanction effect to the UN Convention on the regime and ensure that employment Rights of the Child. support is positive not punitive.

We will stop 300,000 children from being in poverty by scrapping the Universal Credit and the two child limit, so The Tories’ flagship social security ending the immoral and outrageous programme, Universal Credit (UC), ‘rape clause’. We will pay childcare costs has been a catastrophe. It has pushed up front so that parents aren’t forced to thousands of people into poverty, turn down work or get into debt to pay caused families to lose their homes and for childcare. forced parents to visit food banks in Labour will protect women in abusive order to feed their children. relationships by splitting payments Labour will scrap UC. We will and paying the child element to the immediately stop moving people onto primary carer. We will make it easier for it and design an alternative system that people to manage their living costs by treats people with dignity and respect. introducing fortnightly payments and Our ambition in designing this system paying the housing element directly to will be to end poverty by guaranteeing landlords. a minimum standard of living. The Conservative’s ‘digital only’ We will start developing this system approach is excluding vulnerable immediately. But we have learned the people. Labour will end the digital lessons from Tory failure: major policy barrier and offer telephone, face-to- change can’t be delivered overnight, face and outreach support. We will especially when people’s lives depend recruit 5,000 additional advisors to on it. So we will also implement an deliver this. emergency package of reforms to Tory cuts are pushing people into rent mitigate some of the worst features arrears and leaving them at risk of of UC while we develop our homelessness. We will stop housing replacement system. costs running away from benefits by scrapping the and increasing the .

TACKLE POVERTY AND INEQUALITY 73 Disabled People We will stop the dehumanising Work Capability and PIP Assessments, Labour stands with and for disabled which repeatedly and falsely find ill or people. We will always challenge stigma disabled people fit to work, and make and discrimination wherever it is found sure all assessments are done in-house. and support the right of disabled people to live independently and be Social security is meant to help treated with respect. disabled people cope with the additional costs and disadvantages The Tories’ rhetoric of ‘scroungers’ they face. But the Tories have cut back and ‘skivers’ has whipped up hatred of that support to inadequate levels. Time disabled people, with disability hate and again disabled people have had to crime skyrocketing, up 37% in the last fight through the courts to receive the year alone. Labour will never demonise support they are entitled to. disabled people or the unemployed. Labour will make sure people who are ill Labour follows the social model of and disabled receive the support they disability – it is not people’s condition need to lead full, independent lives. or impairment that disables them, but society’s failure to adapt to those We will: conditions and impairments. We are • Increase Employment and Support committed to removing the barriers Allowance by £30 per week for those constructed by society and ensuring in the work-related activity group. that disabled people can participate fully and equally in our society. • Raise the basic rate of support for children with disabilities to the level of The Conservatives have created a Child Tax Credits. hostile environment for disabled people, who have borne the brunt of Tory cuts. • Ensure that severely disabled people The United Nations has said that the without a formal carer receive extra Tories have systematically and gravely support to enable them to meet the violated disabled people’s rights by extra costs they inevitably face. denying them the support they are We will support those who look after entitled to. others, increasing the Carer’s Allowance Labour will end this hostile environment. to the level of the Jobseeker’s Allowance. We will give effect to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and amend the Equality Act to reflect the social model of disability.

74 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE We will help disabled people who want to raise the State Pension Age, leaving to work by bringing back specialist it at 66. We will review retirement ages employment advisors, introducing for physically arduous and stressful a government-backed Reasonable occupations, including shift workers, Adjustments Passport scheme to help in the public and private sectors. people move between jobs more easily, We will maintain the ‘triple lock’ and and reviewing support for disabled guarantee the Winter Fuel Payment, people at work, including the Access to free TV licences and free bus passes Work scheme. as universal benefits.

Thanks to automatic enrolment, Pensions which was introduced by the last Labour government, record numbers People work hard for most of their lives of employees are now in workplace and deserve a decent retirement free of pension schemes. But too many financial stress and insecurity. people are still not saving enough Under the Tories, 400,000 pensioners for a comfortable retirement. have been pushed into poverty and We will stop people being auto-enrolled a generation of women born in the into rip-off schemes and seek to 1950s have had their pension age widen and expand access for more changed without fair notification. low-income and self-employed workers. This betrayal left millions of women We will establish an independent with no time to make alternative plans Pensions’ Commission, modelled on the – with sometimes devastating personal Low Pay Commission, to recommend consequences. target levels for workplace pensions. Labour recognises this injustice, and We will create a single, comprehensive will work with these women to design and publicly run pensions dashboard a system of recompense for the losses that is fully transparent, including and insecurity they have suffered. information about costs and charges. We will ensure that such an injustice We will legislate to allow the CWU- can never happen again by legislating Royal Mail agreement for a collective to prevent accrued rights to the state pension scheme to proceed and allow pension from being changed. similar schemes. The Conservatives have repeatedly Labour has listened to the NUM and raised the state pension age despite in government will end the injustice of overseeing a decline in life expectancy. the state taking 50% of the surplus in Labour will abandon the Tories’ plans the Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme and

TACKLE POVERTY AND INEQUALITY 75 introduce new sharing arrangements so that 10% goes to government and 90% stays with scheme members. This new sharing arrangement will also apply to the British Coal Staff Superannuation Scheme.

We will ensure that the pensions of UK citizens living overseas rise in line with pensions in Britain.

76 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE HOUSING

Everyone has the right to There is no starker symbol of the failing housing a decent, secure home. system than the horror of the . In 1945, Labour promised A Labour government will bring system-wide change, to ‘proceed with a so that a tragedy like Grenfell never happens again. housing programme We will introduce a £1 billion Fire Safety Fund to fit with the maximum sprinklers and other fire safety measures in all high- practical speed until rise council and housing association tower blocks, every family in this island enforce the replacement of dangerous Grenfell- has a good standard of style cladding on all high-rise homes and buildings, accommodation’. In 2019, while introducing mandatory building standards and we renew that pledge. guidance, inspected and enforced by fully trained But too many people Fire and Rescue Service fire safety officers. are being denied their Grenfell Tower was the confirmation of a more far- right to a good home by reaching crisis. Everyone knows of someone affected our housing system that by the housing crisis: younger people unable to buy treats homes as financial a first home, renters trapped in damp flats, families assets rather than places stuck on council waiting lists, leasehold home-owners to live. hit by unfair fees, people who are homeless living and dying on our streets. The gap between the housing

TACKLE POVERTY AND INEQUALITY 77 haves and have-nots is at the heart Labour will tackle the climate crisis and of the injustice in our country today. cut energy bills by introducing a tough, new zero-carbon homes standard for Since 2010, the Conservatives have all new homes, and upgrading millions slashed funding for new homes, of existing homes to make them more refused to regulate for higher standards energy efficient. We will review the and given a free hand to commercial planning guidance for developments property developers. There are fewer in flood risk areas. new homes for social rent, a million more households stuck renting from a private landlord, 900,000 fewer Council and Social Homes young people owning a home and more than twice as many people The only way to deliver on everyone’s sleeping on our streets. right to a good home is to build publicly funded social housing. Only Labour has a plan to fix the housing crisis. We will act on every front Labour will deliver a new social to bring the cost of housing down and housebuilding programme of more than standards up, so that everyone has a a million homes over a decade, with decent, affordable place to call home. council housing at its heart. By the end of the Parliament we will be building Labour will create a new Department at an annual rate of at least 150,000 for Housing, make Homes England a council and social homes, with 100,000 more accountable national housing of these built by councils for social rent agency and put councils in the driving in the biggest council housebuilding seat. We will set out a strategy for a programme in more than a generation. flourishing construction sector with a We will establish a new duty on councils skilled workforce and full rights at work. to plan and build these homes in their Labour will set up a new English area, and fund them to do so, with Sovereign Land Trust, with powers to backing from national government. buy land more cheaply for low-cost We will scrap the Conservatives’ bogus housing. We will use public land to build definition of ‘affordable’, set as high this housing, not sell it off to the highest as 80% of market rents, and replace it bidder. Developers will face new ‘use with a definition linked to local incomes. it or lose it’ taxes on stalled housing These council and housing association developments. We will keep the Land homes will be more affordable than Registry in public hands, and make market housing and built to higher ownership of land more transparent. standards. We will end the conversion We will make brownfield sites the of office blocks to homes that priority for development and protect sidestep planning permission the green belt. through ‘permitted development’.

78 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE We will stop the haemorrhage of low- will bring empty homes back into use cost homes by ending the right to by giving councils new powers to tax buy, along with the forced conversion properties empty for over a year. of social rented homes to so-called Labour will end the scandal of leasehold ‘affordable rent’. We will review the case for the millions who have bought their for reducing the amount of housing home but don’t feel like they own it. debt councils currently hold. And we will We will end the sale of new leasehold give councils the powers and funding to properties, abolish unfair fees and buy back homes from private landlords. conditions, and give leaseholders the We will give tenants a stronger say in their freehold at a price the management of their homes and they can afford. We will introduce stop social cleansing by making sure equivalent rights for freeholders on regeneration only goes ahead when privately owned estates. it has the consent of residents, and that all residents are offered a new property on the same site and terms. Private Renters We will fund a new Decent Homes More than 11 million people rent from a programme to bring all council and private landlord and many of them are housing association homes up to a at the sharp end of the housing crisis. good standard. We will take urgent action to protect private renters through rent controls, open-ended tenancies, and new, Home Ownership binding minimum standards. Under the Tories, home ownership is Labour will stop runaway rents by getting further out of reach for more capping them with inflation, and give and more people. Numbers of new cities powers to cap rents further. affordable homes to buy have fallen, and fewer younger people can afford We will give renters the security they their own home. We will build more need to make their rented housing a low-cost homes reserved for first-time home, with new open-ended tenancies buyers in every area, including Labour’s to stop unfair, ‘no fault’ evictions. We new discount homes with prices linked will make sure every property is up to to local incomes. scratch with new minimum standards, enforced through nationwide licensing We will reform Help to Buy to focus and tougher sanctions for landlords who it on first-time buyers on ordinary flout the rules. We will fund new renters’ incomes. We will introduce a levy on unions in every part of the country – to overseas companies buying housing, allow renters to organise and defend while giving local people ‘first dibs’ their rights. on new homes built in their area. We

TACKLE POVERTY AND INEQUALITY 79 We will get rid of the discriminatory We will bring in a new national levy on rules that require landlords to check second homes used as holiday homes people’s immigration status or that to help deal with the homelessness allow them to exclude people on crisis, so that those who have done well . We will give councils from the housing market pay a bit more new powers to regulate short-term lets to help those with no home. through companies such as Airbnb. We will save lives this winter by ensuring extra shelters and support are in place in all areas. And we’ll repeal the Homelessness Vagrancy Act and amend antisocial No one should sleep without a roof behaviour legislation to stop the law over their head in one of the richest being used against people because countries in the world. But under the they are homeless. Tories, the number of people sleeping rough has more than doubled.

Over 125,000 children are now living in temporary accommodation, without a home to call their own – or the space they need to thrive. Labour will tackle the root causes of rising homelessness with more affordable homes and stronger rights for renters.

Labour will end rough sleeping within five years, with a national plan driven by a prime minister-led taskforce. We will expand and upgrade hostels, turning them into places where people can turn their lives around. We will make available 8,000 additional homes for people with a history of rough sleeping. We will tackle the wider causes of homelessness, raising the Local Housing Allowance in line with the 30th percentile of local rents, and earmarking an additional £1 billion a year for councils’ homelessness services.

80 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES

For many people, politics We want our political institutions to be connected fully doesn’t work. The to the wider electorate, and will take urgent steps to Westminster bubble is refresh our democracy. a world away from their The time has come for the real changes that a Labour daily lives. The Labour government will bring. Party was founded to give working-class We will act immediately to end the hereditary people a voice in politics. principle in the , and work to abolish the House of Lords in favour of Labour’s preferred option of an elected Senate of the Nations and Regions, but we also believe that the people must be central to historic political changes.

The renewal of our Parliament will be subject to recommendations made by a UK-wide Constitutional Convention, led by a citizens’ assembly. This Convention will answer crucial questions on how power is distributed in the UK today, how nations and regions can best relate to each other and how a Labour government can best put power in the hands of the people.

TACKLE POVERTY AND INEQUALITY 81 Only a Labour government will Tackling Vested Interests safeguard the future of a devolved UK, Labour will change how politics is reforming the way in which it works to funded, banning donations from tax make it fit for the future. avoiders and tax evaders, and closing Britain is one of the most centralised loopholes that allow the use of shell countries in Europe. Labour will companies to funnel dark money decentralise decision-making and into politics. strengthen local democracy. We We will free the voices of civil society reiterate our commitment to One by repealing the Lobbying Act 2014 Yorkshire, and will make directly elected and overhauling the rules that govern mayors more accountable to local corporate lobbying. We will introduce councillors and elected representatives. a lobbying register covering both We will re-establish regional in-house lobbyists and think tanks and Government Offices to make central extending to contacts made with all government more attuned to our senior government employees, not English regions, to support our regional just ministers. investments, and to enable the shift of We will also increase the financial political power away from Westminster. penalties available to the Electoral Our democratic revolution will also Commission and require imprints for extend to elections. digital political adverts.

A Labour government will repeal the We will stop MPs from taking paid Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, which second jobs, with limited exemptions has stifled democracy and propped up to maintain professional registrations weak governments. We will maintain like nursing. We will replace ACOBA, 650 constituencies and respond the business appointments committee, objectively to future, independent with a sufficiently resourced and boundary reviews. We will oversee the empowered new body, governed by a largest extension of the franchise in diverse and representative board and generations, reducing the established in law. We will also overhaul to 16, giving full voting rights to all the system of ministerial appointments UK residents, making sure everyone to public office. who is entitled to vote can do so by introducing a system of automatic voter registration, and abandoning plans to introduce voter ID which has been shown to harm democratic rights.

82 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE We will bring greater transparency by Women in Northern Ireland should extending Freedom of Information have access to abortions in Northern rules to cover private providers of Ireland. A Labour government will fully public services, setting new standards implement new laws on equal marriage of consistent disclosure practice and in Northern Ireland so that same- ending the six-month time limit in which sex couples are no longer treated as the Information Commissioner can second-class citizens. We will work prosecute the deliberate destruction with all major parties in Northern Ireland of public records. to provide a good platform for the restoration of alongside bringing forward and implementing Northern Ireland a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland as outlined in the . The Good Friday Agreement and long- term peace in Northern Ireland is one A Labour government will also protect of the great achievements of Labour Northern Ireland and its people in any in government. Therefore, as a priority, future Brexit outcome by ensuring Labour will work quickly and tirelessly to that there is no return to a hard border secure the return of a genuine power- between Northern Ireland and the sharing government in Northern Ireland. or the creation of a regulatory border down the Irish Sea. The devolved power-sharing institutions have not been running in Stormont for over 1,000 days. During this period Wales people have suffered in the face of a funding crisis as austerity continues to Labour’s constitutional convention damage public services, which Labour will include the ’s will resolve. 20-point plan for the future of the UK to better recognise the realities of a Working with a new assembly and devolved UK. power-sharing government, Labour will invest an extra £1.9 billion to end Alongside this work, we need long-term austerity and rebuild public services in reform of how the UK allocates public Northern Ireland. expenditure to ensure that it reflects the needs of different parts of our country and that no nation or region of the UK is unfairly disadvantaged.

Labour in Wales has pioneered the social partnership approach. With a UK Labour government investing an extra

TACKLE POVERTY AND INEQUALITY 83 £3.4 billion in Wales, and a UK Ministry Scotland for Employment Rights we will be able Labour in government will give around to do much more. 700,000 Scottish workers a pay rise Wales led the first industrial revolution when we introduce a Real Living Wage and with a Labour government in of £10 an hour. Westminster, we will be at the forefront We will also provide Scotland with at of the Green Industrial Revolution least around £100 billion of additional of the future. We will create jobs in resources over two terms. This Wales through environmental energy investment will transform Scotland’s schemes such as the Bay people, communities, public services tidal lagoon project. and industries. The Tories have let down the people As part of that additional resource of Ynys Môn (Anglesey) by failing to Labour would want to see £10 billion deliver the Wylfa project. Labour will from our new National Transformation work with people on the island to Fund invested in the building of 120,000 maximise its potential for new nuclear council and social homes in Scotland energy, alongside investment in over the next ten years, ending the renewables. housing crisis and creating up to Nine years of Tory cuts have done 50,000 jobs. untold damage and the Thomas This is the difference a UK Labour Commission on Justice in Wales is clear government would make to Scotland that the justice system is not working for Wales. Labour governments in Wales As part of our Green Industrial and Westminster will work together, Revolution we will invest £6 billion in using the Commission’s report, to put retrofitting houses across Scotland, that right. which will help tackle the climate emergency at the same time as Three years on from the 2016 EU lowering bills, ending fuel poverty referendum we understand much and creating 35,000 jobs. more about how Wales will be uniquely exposed to a hard Brexit. Only Labour A UK Labour government will also will put this decision back in the hands provide the Scottish National of the people, and in Wales the Welsh Investment Bank, under government will campaign control, with £20 billion of lending to remain. power to deliver funds to local projects and Scotland’s small businesses.

84 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE Labour believes that would be economically devastating and it would be the many not the few who would pay the price. Scotland needs the transformative investment coming from a Labour government, not another referendum and not independence.

A UK Labour government will focus on tackling the climate emergency, ending austerity and cuts, and getting Brexit sorted. That’s why in the early years of a UK Labour government we will not agree to a Section 30 order request if it comes from the Scottish Government.

TACKLE POVERTY AND INEQUALITY 85 86 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE THE FINAL SAY ON BREXIT

89 THE FINAL SAY ON BREXIT

87

THE FINAL SAY ON BREXIT

Labour will give the Only a Labour government will put this decision people the final say in the hands of the people to give you the final say. on Brexit. Within three This will be a legally binding referendum and we months of coming will implement the people’s decision immediately. to power, a Labour The Tories have failed for three years to get Brexit government will secure sorted, in a shambles of repeated delays and a sensible deal. And uncertainty. Whether people voted Leave or Remain within six months, we in 2016, people and businesses are crying out for will put that deal to a politicians in Westminster to finally focus on the public vote alongside wider challenges we face. the option to remain. A Labour government Labour rules out a no-deal Brexit, and we will end the will implement whatever scandal of billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money the people decide. being wasted on no-deal preparations. No deal has never been a viable option. It would do enormous harm to jobs, rights, security and to our NHS.

Labour has led the campaign to stop a no-deal Brexit. A majority Tory government would pose a renewed threat of the UK crashing out with no deal. Only a Labour government can prevent this.

THE FINAL SAY ON BREXIT 89 We will rip up the deeply flawed • Dynamic alignment on workers’ rights, deal negotiated by . consumer rights and environmental We opposed his deal precisely because protections so that UK standards keep it would do such harm to workers’ rights, pace across Europe as a minimum, environmental protections and to our allowing the UK to lead the way, manufacturing industry. not fall behind.

Boris Johnson’s deal is even worse than • Continued participation in EU ’s: it would leave the UK agencies and funding programmes, £70 billion worse off by 2029; it would including in such vital areas of give the green light to co-operation as the environment, undermining UK manufacturing; and it scientific research and culture. would leave our NHS at the mercy of • Clear commitments on future security a trade deal with . This arrangements, including access to the sell-out deal is unacceptable to Labour. European Arrest Warrant and shared Labour will secure a new Brexit deal databases, making people safer at – one that protects jobs, rights and home and abroad. the environment, avoids a hard border Labour will secure a revised Withdrawal in Northern Ireland and protects the Agreement that provides legal protection Good Friday Agreement and the peace for citizens’ rights, meets our international process. We will also ensure that there is obligations – particularly with regard no change in the status or sovereignty to the Good Friday Agreement – and of Gibraltar. ensures an appropriate transition period Our deal will be based on the principles to allow businesses and citizens to we have set out over the last two years. adapt to any new arrangements.

It will include: We will also secure robust and legally binding protections for workers’ rights, • A permanent and comprehensive consumer standards and environmental UK-wide customs union, which is vital protections, and ensure level-playing- to protect our manufacturing industry field protections are maintained. Labour and allows the UK to benefit from joint will never accept an outcome that puts UK-EU trade deals, and is backed by rights and standards at risk. businesses and trade unions. Once we have secured this new deal • Close alignment with the Single we will put it to a legally binding Market – ensuring we have a strong referendum alongside the option future economic relationship with the of remaining in the EU. EU that can support UK businesses. This will take place within the first six months of a Labour government.

90 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE Labour is the only party that can farmers, our fishing industry and heal the harmful divisions in our protection for our natural environment. communities and address the Labour recognises the huge benefits of devastation caused by 10 years of immigration to our country. Many British austerity, ruthlessly imposed on society citizens have benefited from freedom by the Tories and Lib Dems. While other of movement, which has given them parties have exacerbated polarisation, the opportunity to study, work or retire defining everyone by how they voted abroad. Likewise our public services and in the 2016 EU Referendum, Labour has our industry have benefited from skilled consistently reached across this divide. workers coming here. Only Labour will deliver a final say Labour believes that citizens’ rights referendum. should never have been used as Only Labour will offer the choice of a bargaining chip in the Brexit remaining in the EU, or leaving with negotiations, and recognises the huge a sensible deal. anxiety this has caused for the three million EU nationals living in the UK and This final say referendum will not be a the 1.2 million UK nationals who have re-run of 2016. It will be legally binding. made their home elsewhere in the EU. Labour will implement the decision of the British people immediately. We will end the uncertainty created by the EU Settlement Scheme by granting Labour will introduce legislation to EU nationals the automatic right to facilitate this referendum and to provide continue living and working in the UK. legal certainty and stability following This new declaratory system will allow the result. EU nationals the chance to register We will introduce a Withdrawal for proof of status if they wish, but will Agreement and Referendum Bill, mean they no longer have to apply providing the legal basis to conduct to continue living and working in this and implement the outcome of the country. This will help ensure reciprocal referendum. treatment for UK citizens living in the EU. It will also prevent a repeat of the We will scrap the Brexit legislation shameful Windrush scandal and avoid currently proposed by the Tories and unnecessarily criminalising hundreds introduce new legislation that is in line of thousands of EU nationals. with Labour’s priorities and principles to protect our economy, trade, jobs If in a referendum the British people and rights. decide to remain in the EU, this must not mean accepting the status quo. This will include new legislation to Labour will work with partners across ensure support and certainty for UK Europe to make the case for radical

THE FINAL SAY ON BREXIT 91 reform of the EU – in particular to ensure that its collective strength is focused on tackling the climate emergency, and ending austerity and inequality.

The EU needs a new political direction and, if the people decide the UK should remain in the EU, Labour will lead the way to ensure that change.

For too long a politically inflicted wave of austerity has damaged communities across Britain and across Europe. The most vulnerable members in our society have suffered, while the super-rich continue to be rewarded by a system that allows them to thrive at the expense of the many.

This must change. If the country decides to remain, a Labour government will take a different approach and strive to ensure that the EU works for people across our communities. The EU should focus on policies that value investment, protect public services and make those who have the most pay their fair share.

If people decide to leave, a Labour government will work constructively with the EU on vital issues of mutual interest and to the mutual benefit of the UK and EU. But we will leave the EU.

Most importantly, under a Labour government, you will get the final say on Brexit.

92 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE A NEW INTERNATIONALISM

95 A NEW INTERNATIONALISM 97 EFFECTIVE DIPLOMACY 100 DEFENCE AND SECURITY 103 INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

93

A NEW INTERNATIONALISM

Labour will put human International peace and security will be a primary rights, international law objective of a Labour government’s foreign policy. and tackling climate Britain deserves better than the Conservatives’ change at the heart of our reckless approach to complex global challenges or international policies, and the outsourcing of UK foreign policy to US President use our global influence Donald Trump. to end the ‘bomb first, Failed military interventions in countries like talk later’ approach to Libya have worsened security across North Africa, security. Labour will accelerating the refugee crisis. always do what is needed to protect the security of Our approach will be based on our values. people in the UK. Within the first year of government Labour will:

• Introduce a War Powers Act to ensure that no prime minister can bypass Parliament to commit to conventional military action. Unlike the Conservatives, we will implement every single recommendation of the Chilcot Inquiry.

A NEW INTERNATIONALISM 95 • Conduct an audit of the impact of Britain’s colonial legacy to understand our contribution to the dynamics of violence and insecurity across regions previously under British colonial rule.

• Invest an additional £400 million in our diplomatic capacity to secure Britain’s role as a country that promotes peace, delivers ambitious global climate agreements and works through international organisations to secure political settlements to critical issues.

96 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE EFFECTIVE DIPLOMACY

Internationalism is at We will: the core of the Labour • Establish a judge-led inquiry into our country’s movement. We recognise alleged complicity in rendition and torture, our responsibility to and the operation of secret courts. confront injustices we see today and to correct the • Issue a formal apology for the Jallianwala Bagh injustices of the past. massacre, and hold a public review into Britain’s role in the Amritsar massacre.

• Allow the people of the Chagos Islands and their descendants the right to return to the lands from which they should never have been removed.

• Uphold the human rights of the people of West Papua and recognise the rights of the people of Western Sahara.

We have a duty to stand up for the security and sovereignty of our overseas territories, including the Falklands, and for the rights of our citizens and dual- nationals abroad, and will continue fighting for justice

A NEW INTERNATIONALISM 97 on behalf of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe the Rohingya community in Myanmar and other British nationals wrongly and the indiscriminate bombardment of imprisoned or suffering mistreatment civilians in Yemen. in captivity abroad. • We will work through the UN and the to insist on the protection of human rights for Sri Human Rights Lanka’s minority Tamil and Muslim Human rights and international populations. humanitarian law are fundamental • Appoint human-rights advisers pillars of a secure global system. These to work across the Foreign Office and principles are under threat. Some of the government to prioritise a co-ordinated world’s most powerful states choose to approach to human rights. sell arms to human-rights abusing states. Conservative ministers, including Boris • Advocate for human rights at every Johnson, have signed off well over bilateral diplomatic meeting. £2 billion of arms sales to repressive regimes since June 2017. Climate Diplomacy Around the world, human rights defenders and civil society activists There is no greater injustice today than remain vulnerable to attacks, often carried countries in the Global South paying out with impunity. the price for a climate crisis they did not cause. Yet some world leaders, including We will: US President Donald Trump and Brazilian • Immediately suspend the sale of arms President Jair Bolsonaro, champion a to for use in Yemen and to climate-change denial agenda. Israel for arms used in violation of the Britain’s climate-change diplomacy human rights of Palestinian civilians, and was respected internationally, playing conduct a root-and-branch reform of an important role in securing the Paris our arms exports regime so ministers Agreement, following the leading role can never again turn a blind eye to the UK played in securing the Kyoto British-made weapons being used Agreement. However, Boris Johnson – to target innocent civilians. who has described global warming as a • Reform the international rules- ‘primitive fear… without foundation’ – has based order to secure justice and overseen a 60% cut in the UK’s global accountability for breaches of human network of climate experts. rights and international law, such as Only Labour can rebuild Britain’s the bombing of hospitals in Syria, the leadership on the most serious threat illegal blockade of the , the to our shared humanity. use of rape as a weapon of war against

98 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE We will: conflict, which must be settled on the basis of justice and international law. • Rebuild our climate expertise All sides must avoid taking action that within the Foreign Office, putting would make peace harder to achieve. climate diplomacy at the heart of That means both an end to the blockade, our foreign policy. occupation and settlements, and an • Use our influence at the UN, EU, G7, G20, end to rocket and terror attacks. Labour World Bank, the Commonwealth and other will continue to press for an immediate global institutions to promote policies return to meaningful negotiations leading to tackle the climate emergency. to a diplomatic resolution. A Labour government will immediately recognise • Use our diplomatic expertise to the . negotiate and deliver more ambitious global targets to deal with the climate Labour will take all lawful action emergency, starting with COP 26 in necessary to counter and confront all next year. forms of terrorism, and we will advocate a long-term multinational political strategy, led by regional actors, to tackle the Prioritising Conflict Prevention spread of extremism. and Building Peace We believe effective diplomacy The Conservatives have failed to play can address the drivers of conflict a constructive role in resolving the and insecurity. world’s most pressing humanitarian We will: crises, including in Kashmir, Yemen and Myanmar, and the escalation of tensions • Build support for UN reform, with Iran. The treatment of the Kurdish including assessing and developing people in Syria, including by Turkey, and democratisation initiatives, and of the Uighurs in China has been met improving the engagement of the with total inaction and apathy by the General Assembly in decision-making to current UK government. In some cases, ensure its institutions are more effective they set aside regard for international at achieving peace. law, including refusing to criticise Crown • Prioritise our responsibility to prevent Prince Mohammed Bin Salman of Saudi conflict by investing in local capacities Arabia over the murder of journalist Jamal for peacebuilding in areas of conflict Khashoggi. – advocating for political, multilateral Labour is committed to a comprehensive strategies for peace. peace in the Middle East based on a two- • Act immediately to urge negotiations state solution – a secure Israel alongside towards a political resolution to conflict a secure and viable state of Palestine. wherever it arises, including in the Middle There can be no military solution to this East and sub-Saharan Africa.

A NEW INTERNATIONALISM 99 DEFENCE AND SECURITY

The primary duty An incoming Labour government will undertake a of government is to Strategic Defence and Security Review to assess guarantee the security the security challenges facing Britain, including new of people in the UK. forms of hybrid, cyber and remote warfare. This review Labour’s defence will also take account of the climate emergency, and policy will be strategic associated threats of resource competition, involuntary and evidence-led. migration and violent conflict. Our security at home Under the Conservatives: is made stronger when the security of • Boris Johnson refuses to publish the report others elsewhere is into possible foreign interference by Russia guaranteed too. in UK democracy.

• Trained army personnel have been cut from 102,000 to just over 74,000.

• Armed forces and their families have been forced to live in sub-standard accommodation.

• Failing outsourced contracts have not been terminated.

100 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE • Our Armed Forces personnel and will seek greater consistency in the received below-inflation pay rises implementation of the Armed Forces for seven years. Covenant by public authorities.

The security challenges we face know We will pay a lump sum of £50,000 no borders. Labour will increase funding to each surviving British nuclear-test for UN peacekeeping operations to veteran to support them and their £100 million. We will maintain our families with the health conditions commitment to NATO and our close they have suffered as a result of relationship with our European partners, exposure to radiation. We will also and we will use our influence at the ensure that black and Asian soldiers United Nations to support peace and who fought in Britain’s colonial armies security worldwide. receive a full apology and explore ways to compensate them for the Labour supports the renewal of the discriminatory demob payments they nuclear deterrent. Labour received compared to their white will also actively lead multilateral counterparts serving at the same rank efforts under our obligations to the in the same regiments. Non-Proliferation Treaty to create a nuclear-free world. The UK defence industry is world- leading and Labour will continue to Labour’s commitment to spend at least work with manufacturers, unions and 2% of GDP on defence will guarantee export partners in line with Labour’s that our armed forces are versatile and foreign policy to support innovation capable of fulfilling the full range of in this sector to ensure it maintains roles and obligations. its highly skilled workforce and world- We will scrap the public sector pay class apprenticeship programme. We cap, which resulted in a real-terms are committed to procurement that pay cut for our armed forces, ensure supports UK defence manufacturing decent housing for forces members including our aerospace and and their families, and guarantee better shipbuilding, alongside a vibrant access for all forces children to good supply chain that includes the British quality local schools. We will consult steel industry and other component on creating a representative body for manufacturing companies providing the armed forces, akin to the Police good jobs throughout supply chains. Federation. Labour will publish a Defence Industrial Strategy White Paper, including a Labour will improve opportunities for National Shipbuilding Strategy, that veterans through access to lifelong keeps all Royal Navy and Royal Fleet learning and training, housing and Auxiliary shipbuilding contracts in the mental and physical health services,

A NEW INTERNATIONALISM 101 UK, to secure a long-term future for the industry and its workers.

Reducing our carbon footprint can only happen with ambitious emissions reduction targets at the Ministry of Defence, one of government’s biggest energy users. So as part of our Green Industrial Revolution, we will create a Climate Change Sustainability Committee within the department to review the feasibility of increasing the use of sustainable energy in defence, and publish a strategy to accelerate the safe and sustainable recycling of our old nuclear submarines.

102 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

The scale of the Labour will use Britain’s influence within the World challenges facing our Bank, IMF and WTO to transform the rules of the world are enormous. global economy so they work for the many. Conflict, climate change We recognise the need to address historic injustices and a global economy and will reset our relationships with countries in the rigged in favour of a tiny Global South based on principles of redistribution elite are driving instability and equality, not outdated notions of charity or and inequality across the imperialist rule. Unlike the Conservatives, Labour world. A bold international is fully committed to a standalone Department for development policy driven International Development (DfID), with an aid budget by social justice has never of at least 0.7% of gross national income. We will been more needed. introduce the reduction of inequality as a goal for all aid spending alongside existing poverty reduction and gender equality goals.

For the Conservatives, too often humanitarian aid is undermined by their disastrous foreign policy, as in Yemen. Under Labour, we will ensure policy coherence across our international-facing departments. Under

A NEW INTERNATIONALISM 103 Labour, DfID will continue to respond damage in their operations and supply to the world’s biggest crises and will chains, including criminal liability in the ensure humanitarian aid is provided most serious cases. according to need, not whether the • Implement a gender transformative UK has commerical or other interests approach across all our international in the country. DfID will assume a work, including tripling funding for strong position in cross-government grassroots women’s organisations decision making, including a permanent and establishing an independent seat on the Export Control Joint Unit ombudsman to tackle abuse in the responsible for licensing arms exports. development sector. Our international programme Labour believes in climate justice. will be based on human rights Wealthy countries like the UK bear the and gender equality. greatest responsibility for the climate We will: emergency. Countries in the Global South that have done the least to cause • Uphold basic rights to education, climate change are already facing the health and clean water by establishing worst impacts, such as rising sea levels, a new Unit for Public Services more frequent hurricanes and greater within DfID, which will include food insecurity. We have a duty to right increasing direct budgetary support this wrong. to governments so they can build sustainable services for their citizens. We will:

• Promote fairer international tax rules • Provide a top-up of new and and help countries in the Global South additional spending on international build progressive tax systems to climate finance to bring the total to finance essential public services. £4 billion a year, and also support international calls for compensation • Support trade unions internationally to those nations already suffering loss in their efforts to promote collective and damage. bargaining for better pay and conditions, and include binding social • Stop all aid spending on fossil fuel chapters in trade agreements to production overseas, redirecting it safeguard workers’ rights. towards clean, renewable energy for all. • Support ongoing UN efforts to introduce a binding international treaty on business • End all UK Export Finance support and human rights, and make companies to fossil fuel projects, and reject any legally accountable for failing to prevent trade deals that conflict with our human rights abuses or environmental climate principles.

104 IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE • Undertake a root-and-branch reform • Introduce legislation to ensure of CDC Group plc (DfID’s principal transparency and parliamentary vehicle for encouraging private scrutiny of trade and investment sector investment in developing agreements. countries), transforming it into a green • Reject any trade agreements that development bank mandated to undermine labour standards or fight poverty, inequality and climate environmental protections, and rule change. out UK Export Finance support to Labour respects the crucial role played companies engaged in bribery or by small-scale farmers the world over in corruption. guaranteeing people the right to food. Labour recognises the right to essential We will: medicines as an integral part of the right to health. • Establish an aid-funded Food Sovereignty Fund to enable small- We will: scale farmers in the Global South • Promote fairer international patent to gain access to land, seeds and regimes that do not prevent countries finance, and uphold indigenous from accessing essential medicines peoples’ right to land. and support efforts to increase the • Support sustainable local food and transparency of medicines pricing so agriculture markets in the fight against governments can negotiate fair prices. climate change. • In the long term, ensure that all Labour believes human rights should medicines developed with the support drive our trade policy. of UK taxpayer money are accessible to people in the Global South. We will:

• Implement UK arms export controls to the highest standard, putting an end to exports where they might be used in violation of human rights or international humanitarian law.

• Ensure government procurement contracts are not granted to companies that are complicit in serious human rights abuses, and require all UK trade agreements to be consistent with international humanitarian law.

A NEW INTERNATIONALISM 105

THE LABOUR PARTY MANIFESTO 2019 THE LABOUR IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE REAL TIME FOR IT’S

12904_19 Reproduced from electronic media, promoted by Jennie , General Secretary, the Labour Party, on behalf of the Labour Party, both at, Southside, 105 Victoria Street, London, SW1E 6QT.