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IFoA Briefing: Green Party Manifesto Summary

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.

 

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.

 

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

 

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

 

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.

 

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.

 

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

 

Further Information

Read the full manifesto. For more information on the IFoA’s general election work, please contact Charlie Wynne.