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IFoA Briefing: Plaid Cymru Manifesto Summary

This briefing summarises the key policy pledges in the Plaid Cymru manifesto released on 13 June 2024 relevant to the work of actuaries.

 

Overview

Leader Rhun ap Iorwerth launched the Plaid Cymru manifesto, titled ‘For Fairness, For Ambition, For Wales.’ The manifesto features three main themes, namely:

 

  • Fair Funding for Wales
  • Fair Play for Patients
  • Fairness for Families and Communities

 

Financial Services / Economy

  • Establish a National Development Agency for Wales
  • Support the reform in Wales of Non-Domestic Rates, also known as Business Rates, to establish a system which better supports small businesses.
  • Recognising the success of the Basque Mondragon co-operative, Plaid Cymru will promote co-operative, employee, and community ownership models.
  • Support the devolution of employment law to Wales

 

Pensions and Welfare

  • Plaid Cymru support an Essentials Guarantee level to ensure that all individuals and families receive at least the minimum required for their daily life. The costs of this have been calculated by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation as being £120 for an individual each week and £200 for a couple.
  • Plaid Cymru will keep the triple-lock pension increase, which means that the state pension will keep pace with price increases and the cost of living. We will also increase the income tax personal allowance for pensioners in line with the triple lock.
  • Introduce a Welsh Benefits System, with a particularly strong case to devolve those benefits which are most closely aligned to existing devolved policy areas, such as health and housing benefits.
  • Plaid Cymru support the principle of a universal basic income and will support pilots.
  • Plaid Cymru support compensation for women who have been negatively impacted by the changes in pension provision, as highlighted by the Women Against State Pension Inequality campaign (WASPI).

 

Technology, Skills, Transport, and Infrastructure

  • Invest in our digital infrastructure and guarantee a high-speed connection to every home and business.
  • Offer a grant of £5,000 to the Personal Learning Accounts of every individual over 25 to train or retrain, with added loans to cover more expensive courses and maintenance costs for those who want to take courses full time (repaid in the same way as student loans).
  • Plaid Cymru demands that Wales receives the £4bn of transport funding to which it is entitled under the Barnett Formula for money spent by the UK Government on HS2, which is clearly an England only project.
  • Plaid Cymru believes that rail infrastructure should be devolved to Wales, as it is in Scotland and Northern Ireland, allowing rail infrastructure planning for Wales to be decided in Wales.
  • Plaid Cymru supports the renationalisation of train and bus services

 

Climate and Sustainability

  • Plaid Cymru will create a Welsh Green New Deal. This will create rewarding, meaningful, and fair work in the emerging green and net-zero sector and includes re-skilling and supporting Welsh employees and apprentices into these sectors, meeting the need associated with demographic change in the manufacturing workforce and the skills shortages already identified.
  • As part of the move towards net-zero, Plaid Cymru will establish a Just Transition Commission.
  • Introduce a Business, Human Rights and Environment Bill. This would mandate that private companies conduct due diligence in their supply chains to prevent human rights abuses and environmental harms.
  • Plaid Cymru believes that greater investment is direly needed in green jobs and transitioning into new methods of construction, so that workers in Wales are not thrown on the scrap heap, but are supported into new, highly skilled and well-paid jobs.
  • Wales should have full control over energy powers, without any upper limit or conditions set by the UK Government.
  • Support a science-led plan aligned with the 2022 Kunming-Montreal agreement to ensure that nature loss is firmly in reverse as soon as possible. Plaid Cymru supports the introduction of biodiversity targets, to halt biodiversity decline by 2030, and ensure substantive recovery by 2050.

 

Health and Social Care

  • Following the introduction of the Carer’s Leave Act 2023 which provides a right to five days unpaid leave to care for a person with a long-term need, a similar provision for paid leave should be considered.
  • Restoring funding for GPs to 8.7% of the Welsh health budget, by recruiting an additional 500 GPs across the country. Plaid Cymru will review governance of the NHS in Wales, looking to strengthen oversight and accountability so that patients receive a better outcome.
  • A preventative public health strategy which re-balances resources to prevent people becoming ill would help the NHS overall by stopping patients entering the system earlier than necessary
  • Plaid Cymru has been working to deliver a National Care Service for Wales. We believe that social care, like health care, should be free at the point of use, and that the distinction between the two is artificial.
  • Pay social care workers at least £1 above the Real Living Wage to make the job more attractive and improve recruitment, and make this index linked. This would ensure that a full-time worker was paid greater than £1,800 more than the Real Living Wage.

 

Rights and Equality

  • Ensure that support was made available as soon as an individual presents themselves as neurodiverse, whether this be through referral or self-referral. This support will be monitored and tailored to respond to the individual’s need as the diagnosis process progresses.
  • Plaid Cymru have supported gender quotas as part of the reform of our Senedd, to ensure that women are ensured representation in decision making at the highest level in Wales.

 

Further Information

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