This briefing summarises the key policy pledges in the Labour Party’s manifesto released on 13 June 2024 relevant to the work of actuaries.
Overview
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer launched the party’s manifesto – Change - which builds on the party’s five missions for government, with a particular focus on kickstarting economic growth and wealth creation. Labour aims to generate growth through:
Restoring economic stability with tough new spending rules
Unleashing investment with a new National Wealth Fund to invest in the industries for the future, and Great British Energy to accelerate the transition to Clean Power.
Reforming planning rules and developing a new 10-year infrastructure strategy.
Reforming decision-making to shift power away from Westminster
Reforming the jobs market by getting people back into work with careers and job centre reform
Reforming the immigration and skills system to ensure Britain is developing home-grown skills
Introducing a modern industrial strategy, working in partnership with businesses and workers to grasp the opportunities of new technologies, such as AI.
Financial Services / Economy
Labour will embrace a new approach to economic management – ‘Securonomics’ – that understands sustainable growth relies on a broad base and resilient foundations.
Labour will ensure economic regulation supports growth and investment, promotes competition, works for consumers, and enables innovation.
Will ensure a pro-business environment, with a competition and regulatory framework, that supports innovation, investment, and high-quality jobs.
Labour will keep mortgage rates as low as possible, with a strong, independent Bank of England – which will continue to target stable inflation of 2 per cent.
Financial services are one of Britain’s greatest success stories. Labour will create the conditions to support innovation and growth in the sector, through supporting new technology, including Open Banking and Open Finance and ensuring a pro-innovation regulatory framework.
Labour will support drivers by tackling the soaring cost of car insurance.
Labour will retain the triple lock for the state pension.
Labour will adopt reforms to workplace pensions to deliver better outcomes for UK savers and pensioners.
Labour will undertake a review of the pensions landscape to consider what further steps are needed to improve pension outcomes and increase investment in UK markets.
Labour will act to increase investment from pension funds in UK markets.
Labour will adopt reforms to ensure that workplace pension schemes take advantage of consolidation and scale, to deliver better returns for UK savers and greater productive investment for UK PLC
Labour is committed to reviewing Universal Credit so that it makes work pay and tackles poverty
Labour will end the injustice of the Mineworkers' Pension Scheme. It will review the unfair surplus arrangements and transfer the Investment Reserve Fund back to members
Technology, Skills, Transport and Infrastructure
Develop a ten-year infrastructure strategy which will guide investment plans and give the private sector certainty about the project pipeline.
Create a new National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority, bringing together existing bodies, to set strategic infrastructure priorities and oversee the design, scope, and delivery of projects.
Capitalised with £7.3 billion over the course of the next Parliament, the National Wealth Fund will have a remit to support Labour’s growth and clean energy missions, making transformative investments across every part of the country. The fund will have a target of attracting three pounds of private investment for every one pound of public investment, creating jobs across the country.
Set out new national policy statements, make major projects faster and cheaper by slashing red tape, and build support for developments by ensuring communities directly benefit.
Update national planning policy to ensure the planning system meets the needs of a modern economy, making it easier to build laboratories, digital infrastructure, and gigafactories.
Develop a long-term strategy for transport infrastructure
Support the transition to electric vehicles by accelerating the roll out of charge points, giving certainty to manufacturers by restoring the phase-out date of 2030 or new cars with internal combustion engines
Labour will further reform compulsory purchase compensation rules to improve land assembly, speed up site delivery, and deliver housing, infrastructure, amenity, and transport benefits in the public
Labour will work with industry to upgrade our national transmission infrastructure and rewire Britain.
Labour will improve resilience and preparation across central government, local authorities, local communities, and emergency services.
Will establish Skills England to bring together business, training providers and unions with national and local government to ensure we have the highly trained workforce needed to deliver Labour’s Industrial Strategy.
Ensure the industrial strategy supports the development of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) sector, removes planning barriers to new datacentres.
Will create a National Data Library to bring together existing research programmes and help deliver data-driven public services, whilst maintaining strong safeguards and ensuring all of the public benefit.
Ensure the safe development and use of AI models by introducing binding regulation on the handful of companies developing the most powerful AI models
Labour will create a new Regulatory Innovation Office, bringing together existing functions across government. This office will help regulators update regulation, speed up approval timelines, and co-ordinate issues that span existing boundaries.
Climate and Sustainability
Labour will make the UK the green finance capital of the world, mandating UK-regulated financial institutions – including banks, asset managers, pension funds, and insurers – and FTSE 100 companies to develop and implement credible transition plans that align with the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement.
Ensure the institutional framework for policy making reflects UK’s commitments to reach net zero and meet our carbon budgets. Reverse the Conservatives’ decision to prevent the Bank of England giving due consideration to climate change in its mandates.
Double planned investment with an extra £6.6 billion over the next parliament to upgrade five million homes. Work with the private sector to provide further private finance to accelerate home upgrades and low carbon heating. Ensure homes in the private rented sector meet minimum energy efficiency standards by 2030.
Improve resilience to tackle the climate and nature emergencies and introduce adaption measures
Deliver for nature, taking action to meet our Environment Act targets. Put failing water companies under special measures and fine for wrongdoing. Create nine new National River Walks, three new National Forests, plant millions of trees and expand nature-rich habitats.
Support the introduction of a carbon border adjustment. Move to a circular economy.
Clean energy by 2030
Work with the private sector to double onshore wind, triple solar power, and quadruple offshore wind by 2030. Invest in carbon capture and storage, hydrogen and marine energy. New nuclear power stations, such as Sizewell C, and Small Modular Reactors will play an important role in helping the UK achieve energy security and clean power.
Labour will maintain a strategic reserve of gas power stations to guarantee security of supply and ensure a phased and responsible transition in the North Sea. Labour will not issue new oil and gas licences to explore new fields nor grant new coal licences.
Extend the sunset clause in the Energy Profits Levy until the end of the next parliament.
Launch Great British Energy to drive forward investment in clean, home-grown energy production.
Seize the economic opportunity of the clean energy transition and use public investment to crowd in private funding. Use the Green Prosperity Plan in partnership with business through our National Wealth Fund to invest in the industries of the future, creating 650,000 jobs across the country by 2030.
Create a new Clean Power Alliance, bringing together a coalition of countries.
Restore the strong global leadership needed to tackle the climate crisis
Regain UK’s global leadership on development with a mission statement will be ‘to create a world free from poverty on a liveable planet’. Restore development spending at 0.7% of GDP as soon as fiscal circumstances allow.
Health and Social Care
Change the NHS from a sickness service to preventative health and a greater focus on the management of chronic, long-term conditions
Shift to more services being delivered in local communities and harness the power of AI, including the NHS app
Ensure that mental health is given the same attention and focus as physical health. Employ 8,500 additional mental health staff
Return to meeting NHS performance standards and cut NHS waiting times with 40,000 more appointments every week by incentivising staff to carry out additional appointments out of hours and pooling resources across neighbouring hospitals. Labour will use spare capacity in the independent sector.
Double the number of cancer scanners
Introduce a new Dentistry Rescue Plan to provide 700,000 more urgent dental appointments
Train thousands more GPs and bring back the family doctor by incentivising GPs to see the same patient
Create a Community Pharmacist Prescribing Service
Ensure the next generation can never legally buy cigarettes. Ban advertising junk food to children along with the sale of high-caffeine energy drinks to under-16s
Build consensus for the longer-term reform of Social Care. Create a National Care Service, underpinned by national standards but delivered locally, providing consistency of care across the country. Principle of ‘home first’
Establish a Fair Pay Agreement in adult social care
Tackle the social determinants of health, halving the gap in healthy life expectancy between the richest and poorest regions in England
Rights and Equality
Will enact the socio-economic duty in the Equality Act 2010.
Will take action to reduce the gender pay gap, building on the legacy of Barbara Castle’s Equal Pay Act.
