This briefing summarises the key policy pledges in the Green Party’s manifesto released on 12 June 2024 relevant to the work of actuaries.
Overview
Co-leaders Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay launched the Green Party manifesto, titled ‘Real Hope, Real Change’. The manifesto features a number of revenue raising measures to support additional spending on public services. In particular, the manifesto has a large focus on the climate, housing and transport.
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Financial Services / Economy
- Regional mutual banks to be set up to drive investment in decarbonisation and local economic sustainability.
- A £40bn investment per year in the shift to a green economy over the course of the next Parliament.
- A carbon tax to drive fossil fuels out of our economy and raise money to invest in the green transition.
- Bringing the railways, water companies and the Big 5 retail energy companies into public ownership.
- A Wealth Tax of 1% annually on assets above £10 million and of 2% on assets above £1bn. Only a tiny minority of people would pay this tax.
- Reform of Capital Gains Tax (CGT) to align the rates paid by taxpayers on income and taxable gains. This would affect less than 2% of all income taxpayers.
- Aligning the tax rates on investment income with the tax and National Insurance Contribution rates on employment income.
- Removing the Upper Earnings Limit that restricts the amount of National Insurance paid by high earners.
- £2bn per year in grant funding for local authorities to help businesses decarbonise.
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Pensions and Welfare
- Abolish the two-child benefit cap, lifting 250,000 children out of poverty.
- Increase Universal Credit and legacy benefits by £40 a week
- In the long term, introduce universal basic income
- Restore the value of disability benefits, with an immediate 5% uplift
- Reform intrusive eligibility tests like PIP and the unfair targeting of carers and disabled people on benefits
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Technology, Skills, Transport and Infrastructure
- Invest £12.4bn in skills and training, equipping workers to play a full role in the green economy
- Increase annual public subsidies for rail and bus travel to £10bn by the end of the next Parliament, with free bus travel for under 18s.
- Invest an additional £19bn over five years to improve public transport, support electrification and create new cycleways and footpaths.
- Renationalise the railways and give local authorities control over and funding for improved bus services
- Introduce a frequent flyer levy, halt the expansion of new airport capacity and ban domestic flights for journeys that would take less than three hours by train
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Climate and Sustainability
- A share of community ownership in local sustainable energy infrastructure such as wind farms.
- Wind to provide around 70% of the UK’s electricity by 2030.
- Delivery of 80GW of offshore wind, 53 GW of onshore wind, and 100 GW of solar by 2035.
- Investment in energy storage capacity and more efficient electricity distribution
- Communities to own their own energy sources, ensuring they can use any profit from selling excess energy to reduce their bills or benefit their communities.
- Cancel recent fossil fuel licences, stop all new fossil fuel extraction projects in the UK and remove all oil and gas subsidies
- Introduce a carbon tax on all fossil fuel imports and domestic extraction, based on greenhouse gas emissions produced when fuel is banned.
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Health and Social Care
- An additional £3bn to enable local authorities to provide high-quality children’s social care
- Introduce free personal care along the lines successfully brought in by the Scottish government, to ensure dignity in old age and for the disabled.
- Increase pay rates and introduce a career structure for carers to rebuild the care workforce
- A year-on-year reduction in waiting lists
- Guaranteed access to an NHS dentist, and £3b a year of extra investment by 2030
- Guaranteed rapid access to a GP and same day access in case of urgent need
- An immediate boost to the pay of NHS staff, including the restoration of junior doctors’ pay to help with staff retention
- Increasing the allocation of funding to primary medical care, with annual spending reaching £1.5bn by 2030
- Restoring public health budgets to 2015/16 levels with an immediate annual increase of 1.5bn. Smoking cessation, drug and alcohol treatment and sexual health services all need to be properly funded.
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Rights and Equality
- Readily available tailored provision to meet the needs of communities of colour, children and adolescents, older people and LGBTQIA+ communities
- Adequate support in the school system for neurodivergent children and children with special educational needs
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Further Information
. For more information on the IFoA’s general election work, please contact Charlie Wynne.Ìý
