What could feature in Labour's election manifesto?

Image source, PA Media

By Oscar Bentley

BBC Political Research Unit

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has set out his plan to “make Britain’s streets safe”.

It is the second of his five “missions” that will set the agenda for a potential first term in government.

Sir Keir fleshed out his first mission, securing the highest sustained growth in the G7, in February.

And we have been getting an insight into what is likely to be included in Labour’s election offer from a series of speeches by frontbenchers.

Submissions to the party’s policy forum closed last week. Insiders say it was the first chance Labour has had to conduct a proper policy process since 2015, because of the snap general elections in 2017 and 2019.

They are now thinking about how to actually deliver policies, as they attempt to transition into a government in waiting.

One Labour insider described it as a seriousness about governing, saying all shadow teams needed a plan they could present to civil servants on day one, setting out what they wanted to do and how they would do it.

While Labour have avoided giving much detail this far out from a general election, here is what we know so far about the policies the party plans to present to voters:

The party says it wants to halve knife crime incidents and the level of violence against women and girls within a decade.

To crack down on knife crime, it would make drawing children into gangs illegal, and tackle selling machetes and dangerous knives online.

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper has promised 13,000 more police officers and community support officers in community teams, with a named officer for every ward and increased town centre patrols.

It says the new officers would be paid for through a £360m police efficiency and collaboration programme.

Image source, PA Media

In 2019, then Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged to recruit 20,000 more police officers as he entered Downing Street. The government is on track to meet that target by the end of March, according to the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC).

However, the NPCC has warned of a “real risk” of numbers declining if pay is not raised to attract and retain experienced staff – meaning Labour might need to look at pay as well as numbers if it takes office. The government recently offered a 3.5% increase in police pay.

Labour also wants to establish specialist rape courts to up the number of convictions, and to place domestic abuse specialists in 999 control rooms. Only 1.6% of rape cases currently result in a charge – and an even smaller proportion in a conviction.

Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves’ big pitch is that all day-to-day government spending would be budgeted and paid for, and that she would borrow only to invest.

This is reminiscent of Gordon Brown sticking to the previous government’s spending plans when he became Labour chancellor in 1997, in an effort to show fiscal discipline.

In his five missions speech, Sir Keir promised the UK would have the highest sustained growth in the G7 group of leading industrialised nations by the end of a first Labour term.

He plans to get there by reforming apprenticeships, creating a modern childcare system, and embracing science, innovation and technology.

But these are all things the Conservatives have been working on in government – and all featured heavily in the chancellor’s Budget last week – meaning Labour will have to spell out precisely how its policies differ before the election.

The party also wants to create a modern industrial strategy – focused on the green “jobs and industries of the future” – underpinned by law and a new Industrial Strategy Council.

The International Monetary Fund has forecast that the UK will be the only G7 economy to shrink this year – by 0.6%. Japan is predicted to grow the most in the G7 this year, by 1.8%

Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting wants to oversee “one of the biggest expansions of the NHS workforce in history” if Labour wins power.

The big plan to pay for all of this – doubling the number of medical school places, creating an extra 10,000 nursery and midwifery clinical placements, and training 1,000 new health visitors a year – is to abolish the non-dom tax status.

Academics at the London School of Economics and the University of Warwick say that would raise £3.2bn a year. But the Conservatives argue the economy would actually lose money if the non-dom rules were axed, as the wealthiest people would leave the UK.

Sir Keir has also announced plans to allow patients to refer themselves to specialists, bypassing GPs. He says this will cut the “bureaucratic nonsense” faced by patients.

But Doctors’ Association UK and a group of campaigning GPs wrote to the Labour leader, calling the plan “ill thought out” and saying it had “the potential to increase NHS waiting times and be incredible unsafe”.

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Reaching a zero carbon power system by 2030 is Labour’s big policy. The party plans to double onshore wind, triple solar power, and quadruple offshore wind – and says this will cut energy bills by tens of billions of pounds by the end of the decade.

At its last party conference, Labour announced plans to create a state-owned, low-carbon energy generation company, which it says will cut bills, create local jobs and increase energy security.

The aim is to expand capacity by working alongside the private sector – so do not expect the likes of British Gas or E.On to disappear, but profits will be re-invested rather than going to shareholders.

A “green industrial revolution” was at the heart of Labour’s 2019 election manifesto under Jeremy Corbyn.

State-owned energy companies are common in other countries – EDF is 84% owned by the French state but will soon be fully nationalised, while Sweden’s Vattenfall is fully owned by the Swedish government.

On Brexit, Sir Keir wants to “fix” the Northern Ireland Protocol, implement a veterinary agreement to eliminate most checks on food products and extend that to cover most of the UK, and forge a new security pact with the EU.

But, in truth, the Labour leader would much rather Rishi Sunak’s recent Windsor Framework resolved much of these issues before we head to the polls – meaning he could leave a lot of that out of Labour’s manifesto.

Labour also says the UK would become Nato’s leading European power.

Shadow defence secretary John Healey announced late last year that all major defence projects would be subject to a “Nato test” in the first 100 days of a Labour government.

He has also said there should be no further cuts to the Army – with a legal duty for ministers to report to Parliament on the fighting strength of the armed forces every year.

Sir Keir’s big pledge in the new year was a “Take Back Control” Bill to move powers out of Whitehall.

The Labour leader says this would be the centrepiece of his first year in government – and would devolve powers ranging from transport to energy to childcare.

Communities would also have the right to request powers that go beyond the ones identified. This follows a review by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the future of the UK at the end of last year.

Mr Brown’s commission recommended a legal requirement that decisions are taken as close as practically possible to the people affected by them.

Shadow levelling up secretary Lisa Nandy announced local growth plans driven by local leaders, and said she would not dictate local governance arrangements.

The House of Lords would be abolished and replaced by a second chamber of elected representatives from the nations and regions, under the proposals.

Sir Keir says he wants to do this in a first term, but is still consulting on it – meaning it might not make it into the final manifesto.

• Ending tax breaks for private schools to fund an “ambitious” school improvement programme
• Free breakfast clubs at every primary school in England – also funded by abolishing the non-dom tax status
• Overhauling standards of police vetting, training and misconduct, as part of raising confidence in every police force to its highest level
• Forcing fly-tippers to clean up dumped rubbish, graffiti, and vandalism
• A £28bn a year Green Prosperity Plan for things like flood defences, electric vehicle battery factories, and home insulation, funded by borrowing
• Continued support for Ukraine, justice in the international criminal court in The Hague, and repatriations to rebuild the country
• A return to spending 0.7% of GDP on overseas aid “as soon as the fiscal situation allows” – something the Conservatives also say they will do
• A legally-binding target to end 90% of all sewage discharges by 2030 – with the threat of prison for water bosses who routinely break the rules
• A home ownership target of 70%, and giving local people priority by raising stamp duty for overseas buyers
• Scrapping and replacing business rates with a new system incentivising investment, but not causing public services or local authorities “to lose out”
• Bringing the railways back into public ownership as franchises expire – but the party would not “nationalise a whole swathe of industries”.

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