--- election_year: 2019 party_id: welsh-labour party_name: Welsh Labour party_leader: Mark Drakeford political_spectrum: centre-left victory: false government_outcome: opposition sections: - economy - taxation - health - education - housing - immigration - defence - foreign-policy - environment - transport - law-and-order - welfare - democracy-and-constitution - energy - science-and-technology - local-government --- # Welsh Labour Manifesto 2019 **CONTENTS** INTRODUCTION – MARK DRAKEFORD AND FOREWORD – JEREMY CORBYN A GREEN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION ECONOMY AND ENERGY TRANSPORT ENVIRONMENT ANIMAL WELFARE REBUILD OUR PUBLIC SERVICES FUNDING HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE EDUCATION POLICE AND SECURITY JUSTICE COMMUNITIES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT FIRE AND RESCUE DIGITAL, CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT TACKLE POVERTY AND INEQUALITY WORK WOMEN AND EQUALITIES MIGRATION SOCIAL SECURITY HOUSING THE CONSTITUTION THE FINAL SAY ON BREXIT THE FINAL SAY ON BREXIT A NEW INTERNATIONALISM A NEW INTERNATIONALISM EFFECTIVE DIPLOMACY DEFENCE AND SECURITY INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY AND SOCIAL CHRISTINA REES 6 8 11 12 22 26 29 30 31 33 41 48 52 55 59 60 63 64 71 76 78 82 86 90 91 95 96 98 102 JUSTICE 105 ## Foreword This general election is the most important in living memory. Nearly a decade of punishing Tory austerity has taken its toll on working people and their destructive policies have left our communities damaged and divided and our planet plunged into a climate emergency. This election is our chance to put that right. The choices we make next about addressing the climate change emergency, Brexit and the future of our public services will shape Wales and our lives for the next generation. We need to make sure that it’s a UK Labour government making those decisions and that there is the maximum number of Welsh Labour MPs at Westminster, acting as a strong and radical voice, standing up for Wales. This general election has to be about real change. It is our chance to set out on a different road ahead in the next decade. Labour is the only party that will give the people of Wales a final say on Brexit, but just as importantly we need to put Labour in government at Westminster so it can work with our Labour government here in Wales to build the stronger, greener and fairer nation we all want to see over the next few years. Labour will invest in our public services and our people, making sure that we have the funds we need in Wales to make us a truly 21st century nation. We’re proud of what our Welsh Labour Government has done to stand up for Wales and protect working people. Welsh Labour has kept our NHS public, created thousands of new jobs and quality apprenticeships, put in place our biggest-ever investment in new schools and colleges, promoted the Welsh language and put renewable energy and biodiversity at the heart of what we do. And with Labour in power at Westminster, we can do so much more. Progressive politics is about understanding our past in ways that can help us shape our future. It is about setting out a compelling vision of the journey ahead and taking people with us on that road. That is what this manifesto is designed to do. It’s a contract with the people of Wales that sets out how Labour governments in Wales and in Westminster will work together - in a new and progressive partnership - to invest in our public services, to protect working people, to tackle climate change and to protect our planet for generations to come. Though the issues we seek to address are complex, this general election is a clear and simple choice. A choice between a Labour government for the **Mark Drakeford First Minister of Wales and Leader of Welsh Labour** **Christina Rees Shadow Secretary of State** **for Wales** many or a Tory government for the few. A choice between a Labour government that wants to put in place a £10 Living Wage, ban zero hours contracts and invest in a Green Industrial Revolution or a Tory government that wants to sell off our NHS to Donald Trump, strip away rights for working people, put profit before the planet and cut our public services to the bone. You can stop that from happening – with a positive vote for Welsh Labour in this general election. Our most radical days are ahead of us. A Labour government at Westminster, with a Labour government in Wales, can push the boundaries of what’s possible, building a different and better future - one that we can be proud to pass on to future generations. OUR MOST RADICAL DAYS ARE AHEAD OF US. A LABOUR GOVERNMENT AT WESTMINSTER, WITH A LABOUR GOVERNMENT IN WALES, CAN PUSH THE BOUNDARIES OF WHAT’S POSSIBLE. ### Foreword **This election will shape the UK for a generation. It is your opportunity to get rid of the Tories and elect a UK Labour government that works not just for a few, but for all of us.** This election is about more than Brexit. It’s also about the climate, about investment, about living standards, about poverty and fair taxes. Above all it’s a chance for real change across the UK. It’s time to take on the vested interests holding people back. The last decade has seen a wealth grab by a privileged few, supported by the Conservatives, at the expense of the majority. The big polluters, financial speculators and corporate tax-dodgers have had a free ride for too long. I’m proud of what Welsh Labour has done in government in Wales over the last few years. They’ve stood up for working families; they’ve kept our NHS in public hands, and they’ve put in place the biggest school building programme Wales has seen in a generation. With Labour in government at Westminster we can build on this platform and do so much more. Labour will build a fairer UK that cares for all, where wealth and power are shared. I am not prepared to continue to see more people queuing at food banks or sleeping rough on the streets. I am not prepared to put up with communities blighted by Tory austerity and millions struggling to make ends meet, while tax cuts are handed to the richest. We can do better than this. How can it be right that in the fifth richest country in the world, people’s living standards are going backwards and life expectancy is stalling? The Tories are failing. They have failed on the economy, failed on the climate crisis, failed on investment for the future and failed on investment for our public services. And with the Tories’ reckless handling of Brexit, Boris Johnson poses the biggest threat to the UK. A UK Labour government will work with First Minister Mark Drakeford and his Welsh Labour government to unlock the potential of all those held back for too long. We will be on your side. Labour will rewrite the rules of the economy, so that it works for everyone. We will invest in our public services, by taxing those at the top to properly fund the services we all rely on. We will launch the largest-scale investment programme in modern times to fund the jobs and industries of the future. We will kick-start a Green Industrial Revolution investing in renewable THE FUTURE IS OURS TO MAKE. IT’S TIME FOR REAL CHANGE – FOR THE MANY, NOT THE FEW. TOGETHER, WE CAN DELIVER IT. energy, investing in rail and electric cars, investing in energy efficiency - reducing fuel poverty and excess winter deaths and creating high skilled jobs at the same time. We will bring rail, mail and energy into public ownership to end the great privatisation rip-off and save you money on your fares and bills. We will deliver full-fibre broadband free to everybody in every home in our country by creating a new public service, boosting the economy, connecting communities and putting money back in your pocket. We will end food bank Britain and lift children and pensioners out of poverty. We will bring in a Real Living Wage of at least £10 per hour for all workers – with equal rights at work from day one on the job. We will end insecurity and exploitation by ending zero hours contracts and strengthening trade union rights. Labour will invest in Wales – in people and communities - and provide the Welsh Labour government with a massive injection of funds to invest in public services. Labour will protect our security at home and abroad. After years of failed foreign interventions and wars, we will instead have a foreign policy based on peace, justice and human rights. And we will get Brexit sorted in six months **Jeremy Corbyn Leader of the Labour Party** by giving people the final say – with a choice between a sensible leave deal or remain. We will implement whatever the British people decide. The choice could not be clearer at this election. Labour will put wealth and power in the hands of the many. Boris Johnson’s Conservatives will look after the privileged few. And only Labour can rid this country of the Conservatives. This manifesto offers the chance of real change for every generation and every community. When Labour wins the nurse wins, the pensioner wins, the student wins, the office worker wins, the engineer wins. When Labour Wins, Wales Wins. We can and we must do better as a country. Our manifesto offers hope, security and a fairer society. The future is ours to make. It’s time for real change – for the many, not the few. Together, we can deliver it. This Welsh Labour manifesto replicates the UK to Wales. In devolved areas such as health, education manifesto spells out our policy proposals for Wales. manifesto on areas that are not devolved and local government, this ## A Green Industrial Revolution ### Economy and Energy **The climate emergency and the crisis of living standards across the UK are the most serious challenges of our time – ones that will impact our lives, our economy and our communities for generations to come.** This election is a time to set out the urgent actions we must all take at a UK level to deal with the challenges we face. A time to make our economy and our communities genuinely fit for future generations. In government is possible. The Generations more equal Wales take all of our up to the important make in the The Welsh Labour world to declare introduced a support for business Working with so much more. climate change in Wales, Labour has shown what innovative Wellbeing of Future Act makes a sustainable, healthier and the new lens through which we now decisions, including how we are facing and radical changes we need to way we live, work and travel. government was the first in the a climate emergency and also new Economic Contract through which is now driving inclusive growth. a UK Labour government we can do We want to lead the world in fighting and drive up living standards by transforming our economy – so that it can become one low in carbon and rich in good jobs. One that is radically fairer and more democratic. The climate crisis ties us all into a common fate. This election is our best hope to protect future generations from an uninhabitable planet. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said we need to cut global emissions in half by 2030 to have a chance of keeping global heating within safe limits – that means acting now, and acting decisively. Our efforts in Wales to boost renewable energy generation have been undermined by the decisions taken by the Tory government to slash support for renewables. We need a UK Labour government that is prepared to take on the big polluters. Where the Tories banned onshore wind and pushed through dangerous fracking in England, the Welsh Labour government banned fracking and has supported a doubling of renewable energy capacity in the last five years. The proportion of our energy consumption from renewables in Wales is now more than 50%, but we need a UK Labour government so we can go further and faster. A UK Labour government will mean that we can accelerate the Green Industrial Revolution, started here in Wales, to transform our industry, energy, transport, agriculture and buildings while protecting and restoring our natural environment. A UK Labour government’s Green New Deal aims to achieve the substantial majority of our emissions reductions by 2030 while creating an economy that serves the interests of the many, not the few. Just as the original industrial revolution brought industry, jobs and pride to our towns, Labour’s world-leading Green Industrial Revolution will rebuild them, with more rewarding well-paid jobs, lower energy bills and opportunities in new industries to communities the length and breadth of Wales. For some, industrial transition has become a byword for devastation because successive Conservative governments were content to sit back and leave the fate of whole industries and communities to the mercy of market forces. Labour will never let that happen. We will show the world how prioritising sustainability will not only deliver immediate improvements to everyone’s lives but also offer humanity a pathway to a more equitable and enlightened economy: one that protects our environment, reins in corporate power, revitalises democracy, unites our communities, builds international solidarity and promises a better quality of life for all. The scale of the challenge requires nothing less. Tackling the destruction of our planet is a question of justice – for the communities at home and abroad who are most affected by it and for future generations who will bear the consequences if we don’t. Social justice defines Labour’s approach. We will make sure that the costs of the green transition fall fairly and are mostly borne by the wealthy and those most responsible for the problem. Just as we have done in areas like steel we will work in partnership with the workforce and trade unions in every sector of our economy to lead the transition in industry to new, good quality jobs of the future and to making sure the extensive skills of our workforce is passed on to the next generation of workers. 2019 saw the blossoming of a global movement calling on politicians to wake up and act on climate change. Labour in Wales welcomed that movement and we have responded to their demands with detailed, credible plans for real change. At the same time as the Tories in Westminster were forcing through an illegal ban of the climate protests in London in October, the Welsh Labour government brought together campaigners and schoolchildren with leaders from the public and private sector to work together to co-create the next phase of our plan of action to achieve a low carbon Wales. **Investment** Delivering the far-reaching changes needed to tackle the climate and environmental emergency will require a full mobilisation of our national resources, both public and private. A Welsh Labour government will work with a UK Labour government to coordinate the significant additional investment needed to tackle climate change and support inclusive growth. A UK Labour government will create a Sustainable Investment Board to bring together the Chancellor, Business Secretary and Bank of England Governor to oversee, co-ordinate and bring forward this investment – involving trade unions and business. We will ask the Office for Budget Responsibility to incorporate climate and environmental impacts into its forecasts so that the cost of not acting will be factored into every fiscal decision. The cost of not acting is far greater than the cost of acting. A UK Labour government will launch a new Transformation Fund of £400 billion and rewrite the Treasury’s investment rules to guarantee every penny spent contributes to meeting our climate and environmental targets – and that the costs of not acting are fully accounted for too. Of this, £250 billion will directly fund the transition through a Green Transformation Fund across the UK dedicated to renewable and low carbon energy, transport, biodiversity and environmental restoration. The Welsh Labour government and the Development Bank of Wales will have a share of these funds to provide additional lending for businesses, infrastructure and innovation over the next decade. As well as largescale projects, smaller loans will be made available through the Welsh Labour government for new start-ups, small businesses, local co-operatives and community projects in towns and villages up and down the country. The Welsh Labour government is currently in the process of establishing a new Community Bank. It will continue to work with partners on this project to improve the diversity and presence of financial support in communities across Wales. A UK Labour government will make sure the UK’s financial sector is helping to tackle the emergency rather than fuelling it. We will improve the fitness of our financial authorities to mobilise green investment and give them powers to manage the risk to financial stability posed by shortsighted investment in polluting assets. Just 100 companies globally are responsible for the majority of carbon emissions. A UK Labour government won’t be afraid to tackle this wanton corporate destruction by taking on the powerful interests that are causing climate change. A UK Labour government will change the criteria a company must meet to be listed on the London Stock Exchange so that any company that fails to contribute to tackling the climate and environmental emergency is delisted. **Levelling Up** A vibrant, socially just economy is the engine which provides for quality public services, available to all. To every democratic socialist, an economy geared to meet the needs of the many is the foundation of what we mean by a good society. Welsh Labour is committed to building a prosperous, sustainable and fair work nation that can support poverty reduction, business competitiveness and inclusive growth in all parts of Wales and its economy. Though the last decade has been tough and UK Government austerity has hit hard, our Welsh Labour government has been able to support good quality jobs right across Wales in key areas such as aerospace, advanced manufacturing and the creative industries. Thanks to Labour’s work in government more than a quarter of a million more people are in work in Wales than in 1999. However, it is clear that the Welsh economy is changing rapidly. New technology, automation, demographic change and the climate emergency are having profound effects on businesses and the economy of Wales – in turn impacting people, families and communities across the country. Welsh Labour is committed to supporting our economy through these important and profound changes. Committed to supporting businesses to make the transition to the low carbon technologies of tomorrow, to supporting individuals to train and re-train for opportunities in industries of the future and, importantly, ensuring inclusive growth in all parts of Wales. This has been the context in which the Welsh government published its Economic Action Plan which seeks to fundamentally change the way the Welsh government supports economic growth. In doing so, it has sought to respond to many of the fundamental concerns expressed in the 2016 EU referendum vote - to address the challenges and unfairness of Brexit and to support inclusive growth across all parts of Wales. In Wales, Welsh Labour has developed a new Economic Contract, which sets out a new and fairer relationship with business. One based on the principle of ‘public investment with a social purpose’. It requires businesses seeking Welsh Labour government support to commit to growth, fair work, reducing their carbon footprint as well as promoting equality, health and learning in the workplace. Over 200 businesses have now signed the contract. The Welsh Labour government is committed to enhancing the contract and extending its reach into new areas of funding. Welsh Labour will be innovative by taking forward the approach it has developed towards the Foundational Economy – those basic services on which every citizen relies and which keep us safe, sound and civilised - care, food, housing and energy, for example. Welsh Labour in government recently launched a new £4.5m Foundational Economy Challenge Fund set up to test innovative new ways of enhancing the physical and economic well-being of communities. Welsh Labour will take the learning from these trials and spread and scale best practice across Wales. As part of this work, Welsh Labour will help to grow the ‘missing middle’ – grounded, medium sized businesses that are the backbone of many economies across Europe, such as Germany. A key aim of this approach is to support a more resilient economy across Wales – one able to withstand the economic forces that have battered it in the past. The Welsh Labour government has been proud to champion cooperatives and social enterprises across Wales. Working with the Wales Co-operative Centre and the new Cooperative Development Agency being established by the UK Labour government, we will seek to double the size of the cooperative sector. Welsh Labour will continue to promote the success of the Better Jobs Closer to Home project, developed in partnership with trade union partners through the Wales TUC. Labour will work with a UK Labour government to ensure a progressive trade strategy that can help develop the industrial base needed to deliver high-quality exports and the decent jobs that go with them. A UK Labour government will uphold the highest environmental and social regulations in all our trade relations, not the downgrading of standards as ‘barriers’ to trade. It will also ensure that the UK’s trade negotiating position - whether inside or outside the EU - reflects the interests of all parts of the UK and is agreed with the devolved governments when devolved powers are at stake. Welsh Labour completely rejects the attempts being made by the Tories to centralise future decisions over structural funding in Whitehall. A UK Labour government will work with the Welsh Labour government to ensure that if we leave the EU, Wales is not a penny worse off and future decisions over successor structural funds are made in Wales, by the Welsh government. **Energy** The Welsh Labour government has demonstrated higher ambition in its emissions reduction targets than any other UK administration. With a UK Labour government we will put Wales on track for a net zero carbon energy system within the 2030s – and go faster if credible pathways can be found. Across the UK, we will deliver nearly 90% of electricity and 50% of heat from renewable and low carbon sources by 2030. A UK Labour government will build: * 7000 new offshore wind turbines * 2000 new onshore wind turbines * Enough solar panels to cover 22,000 football pitches * New nuclear needed for energy security As part of our commitment to a Green Industrial Revolution, a UK Labour government will create jobs in Wales through environmental energy schemes such as the Swansea Bay lagoon project. The Welsh Labour government is already leading the way in renewable energy innovation. Some of the world’s most advanced wave and tidal technologies are in development in the test areas established around the Welsh coast. With a UK Labour government we can become the world leaders in marine energy where once we were world leaders in the production of coal. The Welsh Labour government took action to ban fracking in Wales. A UK Labour government will extend the ban on fracking to cover the whole of the UK. The Tories have failed to invest in renewable heat schemes and refused to devolve decision-making and funding to Wales despite the fact that renewable heat is inherently local. A UK Labour government will allow us to invest in the roll out of renewable heat technologies including heat pumps, solar hot water, hydrogen, and district heat networks using waste heat. A UK Labour government will enable the Welsh Labour government to invest in the power storage, grid enhancement and interconnectors we need to bring more renewable energy on stream more quickly. The Tories have let down the people of Ynys Môn by failing to deliver the Wylfa project. Labour will work with people on the island to maximise its potential for new nuclear energy, alongside investment in renewables. Action by the Welsh Labour government has helped lift more than 150,000 households out of fuel poverty. In England, the Tories scrapped the Warm Front programme and fuel poverty has remained at static levels as a result. In contrast, through continuing to fund home energy efficiency as part of our own Warm Homes programme in Wales, fuel poverty has halved. With a UK Labour government, we will upgrade the vast majority of homes in Wales to the highest energy efficiency standards, reducing the average household energy bill in the UK by £417 per household per year by 2030 and eliminating fuel poverty. We will introduce a zero carbon homes standard for all new homes. **Ownership** We will not achieve the promise of a fair and sustainable economy if we repeat the mistakes of the carbon era, when the capture of a natural resource for private profit created a vastly unequal and polluting economy dominated by powerful vested interests. It’s not just carbon. From the depletion of fish stocks to the burning of the Amazon, profit has proved a poor regulator for use of our global natural resources. Whether it is the trillions of litres of water lost through leakages, barriers to renewable energy connecting to the grid or the billions of pounds of bill-payers’ money being siphoned off in dividends to wealthy shareholders, Tory privatisation of our utilities has been a disaster for both our planet and our wallets. Learning from the innovative Dŵr Cymru model in Wales, a UK Labour government will put people and planet before profit by bringing our energy and water systems into democratic public ownership. Public ownership will secure democratic control over the United Kingdom’s strategic infrastructure and provide collective stewardship for key natural resources. In the case of energy, it will also help deliver a new UK Labour government’s ambitious emissions targets. Whereas private network companies have failed to upgrade the grid at the speed and scale needed, publicly owned networks will accelerate and coordinate investment to connect renewable and low carbon energy while working with energy unions to support energy workers through the transition. Under a UK Labour government: * A new UK National Energy Agency will own and maintain the national grid infrastructure and oversee the delivery of our decarbonisation targets * 14 new Regional Energy Agencies in England and National Energy Agencies in Wales and Scotland will replace the existing district network operators and hold statutory responsibility for decarbonising electricity and heat and reducing fuel poverty. * The supply arms of the ‘Big Six’ energy companies will be brought into public ownership where they will continue to supply households with energy while helping them reduce their energy demand. The Conservatives allowed the proceeds of North Sea oil to be squandered on tax cuts for the richest and captured in profits for the few, instead of investing them in our future. We now stand at an even greater crossroads in the development of our national economy. Under a UK Labour government our green future will be owned by all of us and whenever public money is invested in an energy generation project, the public sector will take a stake and return profits to the public. **Industry and Innovation** Averting climate catastrophe offers huge economic opportunities. But Britain will only benefit from a Green Industrial Revolution with the right policies. Over the past three decades Britain has reduced its emissions at the expense of domestic industry by offshoring production. This is an accounting trick, not a solution. It does not protect the climate, is unfair to other countries and damages jobs and communities at home. Labour will take full responsibility for our carbon footprint instead of passing the buck. We will instruct the Committee on Climate Change to assess the emissions the UK imports as well as those it produces, and recommend policies to tackle them, including making UK industry the greenest in the world. The Conservatives have presided over a lost decade of productivity and allowed Britain to fall behind in the green technologies of the future. Labour will make sure this never happens again. Key to tackling the societal challenges we face – the climate crisis, our productivity problem, the plastic filling our oceans, our ageing population, antibiotic resistance – will be ensuring that there is targeted science, research and innovation being undertaken in these important areas. As part of our plan to usher in a Green Industrial Revolution, a UK Labour government will set a target for 3% of UK GDP to be spent on research and development (R&D) by 2030. It will achieve this target by increasing direct support for R&D and encourage greater private investment. A UK Labour Government will establish a Foundation Industries Sector Council to provide a clean and long-term future for existing heavy industries like steel and glass and fund R&D into newer technologies like hydrogen and carbon capture and storage. The Welsh Labour government will work with a UK Labour government to ensure more of that vital R&D happens in Wales, with particular emphasis on attracting funding in existing areas of strength as well as newer technologies. Welsh Labour will work tirelessly with its trade union colleagues to secure a sustainable future for our vital manufacturing sector in Wales. Across the UK, Labour governments will work together to provide a clean and long-term future for important industries to Wales. Back in March 2016 when Tata announced that it was selling its UK operations, the Welsh Labour government put significant financial support on the table to support the workers and the communities involved and keep steel production and steel jobs here in Wales. Though there is still more to do, thanks to the financial support made available Welsh Labour proved that there is still a future for the steel industry in Wales and that an active approach to industrial policy really does work. Welsh Labour will promote an active industrial policy and create the right business environment which can support a sustainable steel industry in the United Kingdom. Welsh Labour will continue to support our vital automotive manufacturing base, by using the positive example of the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre in North East Wales to work with vital supply chains; support the application of - and transition to - new technologies and support workers to update their skills and capabilities throughout their careers. Working together across the UK, Labour’s progressive trade strategy will help develop the industrial base **Skills** needed to deliver high-quality exports and the decent jobs that go with them. Labour will champion exports from the environmental goods and services sector, building on the jobs that the sector already sustains. We will uphold the highest environmental and social regulations in all our trade relations, not the downgrading of standards as ‘barriers’ to trade. For small businesses, we will ensure no quarterly reporting for businesses below the VAT threshold. Labour’s Green Industrial Revolution will create 1m jobs across the UK and Welsh Labour will work with a UK Labour government to ensure that the jobs created in Wales are well-paid, unionised jobs – in line with our ambition to make Wales a fair work nation. Welsh Labour will build on the foundation of the Economic Action Plan to support people with the skills they need to access these jobs of the future. The Tories’ Apprenticeship Levy has been beset by problems with a number of critical reports demonstrating how it is not working for business. In Wales we have taken a different approach and shaped our apprenticeship programme around the needs of learners and our local economies. In Wales, because of our approach, we haven’t seen the large drop-off in starts seen in England. Apprenticeship numbers remain on track and by 2021 the Welsh Labour government will have created over 100,000 during the course of the Assembly term. The Welsh Labour government will continue to focus investment where it is needed in our economy and will use the intelligence sourced through reformed Regional Skills Partnerships to support more of the skills needed to lead the world in clean and emerging technology. Welsh Labour has been proud to work with Trade Union partners to deliver the WULF programme. In government in Wales, Labour will continue to support the programme so it can go on changing the lives of thousands of working people across the country. Funding from a UK Labour government will allow the Welsh Labour government to make new investments in the WULF and ESOL services. ### Transport **In government Welsh Labour has set out an ambitious plan to build a world class, low carbon and integrated public transport system, a system grounded on the principle that transport is an essential public service. We want to use our public transport system to deliver our economic, social and environmental ambitions as a nation over the coming decade and beyond.** Crucially, the Welsh Labour government wants to encourage people to switch from private car use and increase the number of people using public transport. This will help to cut emissions, pollution and congestion as well as improve air quality. In Wales we to inform the decisions and investments we make. legislation that will give local councils the powers are using our The Welsh Labour free market model Tories in the 1980s more people buses are essential for older and economically In government to improve bus as giving them **PHOTO: Ed Webster** ground-breaking Future Generations Act government has been clear that the of bus services put in place by the has been an abject failure. Carrying than any other mode of public transport, to our lives, providing a lifeline younger people and particularly many disadvantaged groups. in Wales, Labour is developing new services through franchising as well the power to create municipal bus companies. We will utilise additional funding from a UK Labour government to increase funding for local bus services and to extend the MyTravelPass scheme providing discounted travel for younger people. The Welsh Labour government will publish a new Wales Transport Strategy to encourage more people onto public transport and to build on the significant £5bn investment being made in the Welsh rail service to deliver significant improvements for rail passengers. The Welsh Labour government will invest more than £800m in new rolling stock, support increased weekday and Sunday rail services; extend free rail travel for younger people, with free travel for under 11s and introduce half-price fares for 16 – 18 year-olds and allow under 16s to go free off peak. Welsh Labour will examine transport pricing to keep fares affordable, particularly in deprived areas. It will invest around £200m in new rail station improvements. Labour in Wales will utilise additional funding made available from a UK government to enhance the exciting Metro project in South East Wales as well as progress the North Wales and Swansea Bay Metros. In establishing Transport for Wales, the Welsh Labour government has worked closely with trade union colleagues to build a stronger rail network, including keeping a guard on every train. We will maintain and strengthen this important relationship over the coming years. The Welsh Labour government will create 600 new jobs on the Welsh rail network, invest in skills and widen access to the industry. It will work with partners to take forward innovative projects such as the Global Centre of Rail Excellence to help make Wales a hub of rail expertise as well as strengthen supply chain capacity, improve productivity and support the inclusive growth benefits of significant rail infrastructure investment. Working with a UK Labour government the Welsh Labour government will bring our railways back into public ownership, using options including franchise expiry to rebuild our railways as an integrated public service. The Welsh Labour government will work with a UK Labour government to develop a model where the responsibility and powers for passenger services and infrastructure are comprehensively devolved to the Welsh government in a way that harnesses the significant knowledge and skills of both the staff that run the railway and the citizens that use it. A UK Labour government will deliver rail electrification and expansion across the whole country, including in Wales. We will ensure that these major infrastructure projects are a model of good employment practice and pay due regard to the environmental impact. A UK Labour government will improve accessibility for disabled people, ensure safe staffing levels and end the expansion of driver only operations. The Welsh Labour government is making the biggest investment in active travel Wales has ever seen. It has committed more than £60m to schemes over the next three years to encourage more people to walk and to cycle. The Welsh Labour government will prioritise funding for active travel on routes that are most likely to encourage people who currently do not walk or cycle to shift their mode of transport. Through the development of new Integrated Network Maps the Welsh Labour government will set out stretching new targets for walking and cycling. Welsh Labour will use Transport for Wales to better plan walking and cycling routes into major transport hubs and improve cycle storage facilities. The Welsh Labour government is developing safer routes to schools and improving road safety to communities across all parts of Wales. The Welsh Labour government will make 20mph the default speed limit for residential areas with limited exceptions where a case can be made. It will also tackle the barrier that pavement parking poses to walking. We will adopt an ambitious Vision Zero approach to UK road safety, striving for zero deaths and serious injuries. Labour’s transport programme in Wales is focused on creating better, publicly accessible transport systems. By improving public transport, Labour will help people to become less reliant on their cars, for our better health, for a cleaner environment and to improve quality of life in our towns and cities. The Conservatives have committed to ending new sales of combustion engine vehicles by 2040. A UK Labour government will aim for 2030. Labour will position the UK at the forefront of the development and manufacture of ultra-low emission vehicles and support their sale. The Welsh Labour government is investing in electric vehicle charging infrastructure and it will work with a UK Labour government to develop this important network. A UK Labour government will accelerate the transition of our public sector car fleets and build on the Welsh Labour government’s commitment to ensure that all taxis and buses in Wales will have a zero carbon footprint within 10 years. The Welsh Labour government will bring forward legislation in the next Assembly term to reform taxi and private hire services, including a review of licensing authority jurisdictions, setting national standards of safety and accessibility and updating regulations to keep pace with technological change to ensure a level playing field. The Welsh Labour government saved Cardiff Airport from closure when it purchased this important piece of economic infrastructure in 2013. In government, Welsh Labour will retain the airport in public ownership on behalf of the people of Wales to encourage further growth in passenger numbers and routes, examining a range of different ways to support investment in the airport in future years. Wales is the only devolved nation to not have any power over Air Passenger Duty. A UK Labour government will act on the cross party consensus and strong evidence base presented by the Welsh Labour government and the Welsh Affairs Committee to devolve power over APD so that Wales is no longer treated less favourably than other nations. The Welsh Labour government is committed to addressing the problems of motorway congestion around the Brynglas Tunnels and will use the recommendations of the Burns Commission to deliver innovative, affordable and sustainable solutions in the shortest possible timescale. A UK Labour government will take action to end nationality-based discrimination in seafarer pay. ### Environment **Labour’s Green Industrial Revolution is complemented by our determination to reverse centuries of damage to our natural environment. Our commitments to ecosystem repair and environmental protections work hand in hand with sustainable jobs and industries, and social justice.** We are facing a climate and environment emergency, and unlike the Tories, we will not trade our environment in pursuit of reckless trade agreements. Labour will support and strengthen protected area designations from National Parks to Local Nature Reserves and **A Healthy Environment** urban green spaces. The Welsh Labour creating our own building on our These have put nations in fighting our hard-won work with a UK continuously environmental government led the way by Environment (Wales) Act 2016, Wellbeing of Future Generations Act. us in a stronger position than other off the Tory attempt to dismantle environmental protections. We will Labour government to maintain and improve the existing standards of EU regulation. The Welsh Labour government is developing a Clean Air Act for Wales to help bring about faster reductions in air pollution from all sources, including road traffic and industry, to meet the World Health Organisation guidelines. A UK Labour government will assist these efforts by introducing a UK-wide vehicle scrappage scheme to enable more people to switch away from polluting cars. Where the Tories have neglected the flood risk to millions of people in the North of England, the Welsh Labour government is investing more than £350m in protecting communities the length and breadth of Wales who are at risk from flooding and coastal erosion. **Nature Restoration** Welsh Labour’s Environment (Wales) Act put into law by the Welsh Labour government has strengthened the legal duties on all public authorities to protect and restore nature. The Welsh Labour government has brought together local communities, businesses and public bodies to work together to maintain and enhance our most vital habitats in every part of Wales. As the UK Labour government reverses a decade of Tory cuts, we will be able to expand these schemes and bring forward nature restoration on an unprecedented scale, bringing our most precious species back from the brink of extinction. We will create new National Parks and strengthen the system of designations, safeguarding local wildlife sites that provide essential connectivity and allowing more people to enjoy living close to nature. The Welsh Labour government has begun the process of establishing a National Forest for Wales, with our vision for the forest to extend the entire length of Wales. This will build on our success in creating the Wales Coastal Path. **Land** Land is a public good, but it is not a common asset. With a UK Labour government, we will be able to invest in more county farms to replace those lost, and will work with agricultural organisations to increase access into farming for new entrants. The Welsh Labour government has fought for fair funding and support for farmers in the face of the threat of the chaotic Tory Brexit. In contrast to the proposals put forward by the Tories, our proposals for agricultural support after Brexit would mean that, at all levels of the scheme, all farmers would be paid on the basis of the environmental outcomes they deliver instead of on the basis of the amount of land they farm. Our guiding principle in designing future agricultural support is that we must keep Welsh farmers on the land and we are working closely with farmers to design the scheme. Food A quarter of all food purchased is wasted every year, equivalent to over 20 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, costing over £20 billion. Yet Britain has an epidemic in food-related ill health, obesity, malnutrition and diabetes, as well as increased food insecurity – with a boom in food bank use and record levels of hunger. A UK Labour government will introduce in law a Right to Food. It will end Food Bank Britain and ensure everyone has access to healthy, nutritious, sustainably produced food. A UK Labour government will halve food bank usage within a year and remove the need for them altogether in three years. We will make food security a reason to intervene in the economy and work with local councils to minimise food waste. Labour will put farmers, fishers, food producers and workers at the heart of our plans for delivering healthy food locally. A UK Labour government will follow the example of our Welsh Labour government by establishing an Agricultural Wages Board for England, so that the terms and conditions of workers in the rural economy are fully protected in every part of the UK. We will continue to strengthen the rights of tenant farmers so they can play a full part in producing sustainable food alongside positive environmental outcomes with government support. We will set maximum sustainable yields for all shared fish stocks, redistribute fish quotas along social and environmental criteria and, if people vote to leave the EU, require the majority of fish caught under a UK quota to be landed in UK ports. Labour will aim to achieve net zero carbon food production in Britain by 2040. **Waste and Recycling** Waste, including plastic waste, pollutes our land and seas, killing wildlife and contaminating our food. We will make producers responsible for the waste they create and for the full cost of recycling or disposal, encouraging more sustainable design and manufacturing. In government in Wales, Labour has transformed the position of recycling, placing us in the top five globally for recycling rates. A UK Labour government will learn from Wales’ example, and will also back bottle return schemes. ### Animal Welfare **The Conservatives have demonstrated they are more than willing to sacrifice animal welfare standards in trade deals with other countries. They threaten to bring back fox hunting and are pursuing the ineffective badger cull – the largest destruction of a protected species in living memory.** In Wales, the Welsh Labour government has resisted the calls for a badger cull and instead have put in place vaccination programs that the evidence clearly shows is both more effective and more humane. A UK Labour government will work internationally to end commercial whaling, ban the importation of hunting trophies of threatened species and boost The Welsh Labour welfare standards We are banning and introducing puppy sales police resources government is strengthening the for domesticated and wild animals. the use of wild animals in circuses new stricter regulation of third-party and breeding establishments. to tackle rural and wildlife crime. ## Rebuild Our Public Services ### Funding **Universal public services collectively provided through general taxation and free at the point of use for all are how we guarantee the right to a good life. Public services do more than make sure everyone has the basics. They create shared experiences and strengthen social bonds. They make our lives richer and more fulfilling.** These universal principles have been made a reality in Wales where prescriptions have been free since 2007 in a Welsh NHS that has not been carved up for private profit. They are the reason the Welsh Labour government has not introduced free schools or We will pay for this by creating a fairer UK taxation system asking for a little more from those with the broadest shoulders, and making sure that everyone academies in A decade of Tory for Welsh public work with the public services pays what they A UK Labour Tories’ cuts to than in 2010. Wales. cuts has slashed the funding available services. A UK Labour government will Welsh Labour government to make our the best and most extensive in the world. owe. government will reverse some of the corporation tax while keeping rates lower We will ask those who earn more than £80,000 to pay a little more income tax, while freezing National Insurance and income tax rates for everyone else. The Welsh Labour government will not increase income tax this Assembly term. We will end the unfairness that sees income from wealth taxed at lower rates than income from work. VAT is a regressive tax that hits the poorest hardest and we guarantee no increases in VAT. We will launch the biggest ever crackdown on tax avoidance and evasion and reform the inefficient system of tax reliefs. The Welsh Labour government is introducing a Social Partnership Bill to support our mission to make Wales a fair work nation. Our new approach to public procurement will build on the Code of Practice for Ethical Employment in Supply Chains designed to support fair work from expanding the living wage to eliminating zero hours contracts. The Welsh Labour government has already legislated to roll back the Tory Trade Union Act, which was designed to undermine workers’ rights in our public services. We will continue to choose partnership over conflict with new agreements to apply fair work standards through public procurement. Responsible businesses that treat their workforce fairly and act to reduce their impact on climate change do not deserve to be undercut by those that refuse to play fair. A UK Labour government approach that shares our values will incentivise good working conditions with services procured that support environmental standards, equalities policies, tax compliance and pay ratios. Despite austerity, the Welsh Labour government has made investing in our future a priority. When the Tories stopped building new schools and colleges in England, the Welsh Labour government strove ahead with the largest building programme in a generation. By benefiting from the UK Labour government’s £150 billion Social Transformation Fund, the Welsh Labour government can go even further with new funding to invest in our schools, hospitals, care homes, council houses and the fight against climate change. The Welsh Labour government has already rejected the PFI model in Wales, dramatically reducing the number of projects with rip off bills compared with the rest of the UK. Our most valuable assets are the dedicated people who work in our public services, but under this UK government, their pay has been cut in real terms. A UK Labour government will restore public sector pay to at least pre-financial crisis levels (in real terms), by delivering year on year above inflation pay rises, starting with a 5% increase, to reward and retain the people who do so much for us all. ### Health and Social Care **The NHS is one of Labour’s proudest achievements. The right to free at the point of use healthcare, universal and comprehensive in scope is socialism in action.** Welsh Labour remains committed to the values on which our NHS was founded; free from market forces and driven not by profit but by what works best for the people who rely on it. This is in stark contrast to the health service in England, which is being sold off piecemeal by Despite a decade Welsh budget, its commitment social services per person in The needs of treatments and all the time. The Health and Social transformation on our overstretched performance the Tories to private companies. of Tory cuts that have slashed the the Welsh Labour government has met to invest more per head in health and than was invested in England. Spending Wales is 11% higher than in England. our communities change and new health technologies are developing Welsh Parliamentary Review on Care was clear that system-wide was necessary to reduce the pressure A&E departments, improve and deliver high standards of care to meet the needs of individuals and communities. The Welsh Labour government’s plan for health and social care sets out how services will develop to ensure they are sustainable in the longer term. Key to this vision is the provision of integrated health and care services that provide support close to home and focus on helping people stay well and out of hospital. We are committed to supporting our health and care services to offer more through the medium of Welsh. We will ensure the voices of local people are at the centre of developments in the health and social care system and that decisions that impact on staff are considered in social partnership. **Quality Care for All** A Labour government in Westminster will mean Wales gets the money it needs to support our health and care services to develop and transform at pace and scale. Increased investment will support our plans to deliver more care closer to home and ensure that when people do need care and treatment in hospital, our specialist services are cutting edge; using the latest in medical innovation. The Welsh Labour government has bought together, on a regional basis, partners from health, local authorities and the third sector to plan and deliver services. We have provided a £100m Transformation Fund to support these Regional Partnership Boards to test and scale up new ways of working that move care closer to home, join up health and social care services and put more emphasis on prevention. The Welsh Labour approach to local healthcare means that GPs in Wales will work with pharmacists, physiotherapists, social workers and others to provide people with direct access to a range of care and support close to home. We have introduced Access Standards – supported by £13 million of investment that will make it easier for people to get an appointment with a healthcare professional at their local GP surgery. We are committed to reviewing our dental workforce and changing the way we contract dental services to make it easier for people to access a dentist when they need one. Contract reform is significantly further ahead in Wales than in England, over 30% of dentists have signed up to our new approach so far. Thanks to our Welsh Labour government Wales already has a more generous set of access rules to dentistry than in England. A UK Labour government will ensure that the Welsh Labour government has the funding it needs to invest further in our NHS services and consider what further actions we can take to improve access to dental services across Wales. The Welsh Labour government has increased investment in community pharmacy. In England the Tories have cut funding for community pharmacy by 7% since 2016. Since the launch of the Common Ailment Service over 100,000 consultations have been completed and over 80% of people accessing the service say they would have visited their GP, out-of-hours or A&E if it had not been available. We are committed to continue to reform and adapt our approach to contracting primary care services, including dental services. This will ensure that people across Wales have access to the support they need to keep well and manage long-term conditions. All Wales networks are supporting improved outcomes for people with specific conditions such as stroke, heart disease and cancer. A UK Labour government will help us to accelerate our ambition to deliver modern and fit for purpose facilities to support new models of care. This means continuing to invest in improving primary, community, social care and hospital facilities. The Welsh Labour government has invested £68 million to develop new integrated health and care centres across Wales by 2021, bringing a range of health and social care services together closer to people’s homes in community and town centre hubs. Welsh Labour is committed to driving up quality wherever and however in Wales people access healthcare. We have bought forward new legislation to introduce duties of quality and candour which will further promote a culture of openness and excellence in our services. We have made parking free in all our hospitals and introduced standards for hospital food. The Welsh Labour government’s ten year plan for health and social care recognised the use of digital technologies as a key enabler of transformational change. £50m has been committed to support programmes, covering services for patients, the public and professionals as well as modernising devices and investing in data and cyber security. We ensure data protections for NHS and patient information, a highly valuable, publicly funded resource that can be used for better diagnosis of conditions and for ground-breaking research. We will ensure NHS data is not unfairly exploited by international technology and pharmaceutical corporations. The Welsh Labour government has invested over £45m during the last three years on large imaging equipment such as Computerized Tomography (CT) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanners. We will continue to support developments that will improve image sharing across Wales and enable accurate detection of disease through artificial intelligence. Since 2019 the Welsh Labour government has advanced microscopy in all health boards. We have established a National Imaging Academy and are developing an all Wales approach to investment in Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanners. The Welsh Labour government has an ambition for the public sector in Wales to be carbon neutral by 2030. NHS Wales, as the largest public sector body in Wales, has a key role to play. Health boards and shared services are introducing low emission vehicles into their fleets as part of our target for all new fleet cars and light goods vehicles to be low emission by 2025. Welsh Labour recognise that continued investment in digital and advanced and greener technology is a crucial part of our plans to transform services. These system-wide developments are helping to deliver improvements across the Welsh NHS and starting to drive down the length of time people are waiting for key treatments. Overall in Wales there are fewer people waiting too long for care and treatment. At the end of March this year 89.1% of patients were waiting less than 26 weeks from referral, the best position since March 2013. Wales also continues to show improvements in diagnostic waiting times despite reporting against a larger set of tests. Therapy waits were 98% lower at the end of March 2019 than March 2018, the best performance on record. The number of delayed transfers of care remains at historically low levels in Wales. 2017 saw the lowest figures recorded in the 14 years that statistics have been collected. Figures in 2018 were the second lowest on record. The Welsh Labour government will continue to invest and focus on these key areas of NHS performance to maintain and sustain improvement and ensure that service transformation delivers for everyone. A UK Labour government will review the tax and pension changes implemented by the Tory government to ensure that the workforce is fairly rewarded and that services are not adversely affected. The changes introduced this April have impacted on NHS performance across the UK with health boards in Wales reporting that between April and August 2019, over 2,000 outpatient, diagnostic, inpatient or day case sessions have been lost as a result, affecting over 15,000 patients. **Mental Health** During the life of its 10 year mental health strategy, the Welsh Labour government has invested in actions that have reduced stigma around mental health and encouraged more people to access support. We have invested in improved support in the community, including crisis intervention for children, young people and adults, and early intervention in psychosis. New community perinatal mental health services have been established, providing support across all areas of Wales. We have ensured greater service user and carer involvement in the development and planning of services at both a regional and national level, significantly reduced the number of children and young people waiting longer than 4 weeks to access treatment and reduced the number of mental health hospital admissions through an emphasis on more support in the community. We have reduced the number of delayed transfers for people with mental health issues, the number of people (both adults and children) that need to be sent outside of Wales for treatment and the number of people in mental health crisis detained in a police cell as a place of safety. During the last 3 years of the strategy actions will focus on: * Improving access to psychological therapies for children and adults - to increase the range of therapies on offer and deliver a significant reduction in waiting times * Further improving crisis and out of hours for children and adults – moving to a common, multi-agency offer across Wales * Further improving children and young persons’ mental health services - improving access across primary and specialist CAMHS as well as supporting the new curriculum and whole school approach. * Further development of perinatal mental health services including developing in-patient provision But we recognise that there is more to do. The Welsh Labour government will do more to support vulnerable groups – including offenders, those with co-occurring mental health and substance misuses issues and services for those with eating disorders. A UK Labour government will implement in full the recommendations set out in the Independent Review of the Mental Health Act. The Welsh Labour government will consider how recommendations relating to devolved issues should inform future policy. **Inequalities** Welsh Labour are committed to reducing health inequality and giving everyone the best possible opportunity to live well for longer. This includes supporting people to make healthy choices and take responsibility for their own health and wellbeing. Our First 1000 Days Programme is designed to give all children the best start in life. It brings together families of young children with cross sector services to find the best ways to act on opportunities, build resilience, amplify protective factors, prevent problems from developing and intervene earlier when risks are identified. Breastfeeding is important for the health and development of infants and is linked to the prevention of major health inequalities. The Welsh Labour government has published a plan to improve uptake and support for breastfeeding. The Welsh Labour government was the first in the UK to ban smoking in school grounds, hospital grounds, playgrounds and cars carrying children. As part of a wider strategy on substance misuse the Welsh Labour government has legislated to introduce a minimum 50p unit price for alcohol and taken a public health approach to gambling supporting an all Wales gambling treatment service. The Welsh Labour government is investing £5.4 million to support projects that strengthen community assets and promote and enable healthy activity for targeted groups who might otherwise be less likely or have fewer opportunities to participate. Our Design to Smile programme, now ten years old, has delivered dramatic improvements in the level of children’s tooth decay with the biggest improvement being seen in our most deprived areas. The Welsh Labour government has launched a new Healthy Weight Strategy setting out the system-wide approach that will be required to tackle obesity, recognising that the environment influences our everyday choices. We will develop and scale up approaches to reverse the current imbalance placed towards unhealthy food choices and ensure that our active environment can help to make good physical activity choices. A UK Labour government will extend the sugar tax to milk-based drinks, set more ambitious targets for salt reduction in food and enforce stricter rules around the advertising of junk food. Immunisation rates in Wales remain at the top of international benchmarks. The vast majority of children in Wales are fully immunised before they start school. Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) has been routinely available for people at risk of HIV from sexual health services across Wales since 2017. Our Future Generations and Wellbeing Act enshrines health aims in all Welsh government and public sector policies and plans. **Workforce** In order to ensure that our health services attract the very best people to live and work in Wales, the Welsh Labour government has invested in an international recruitment campaign for doctors, nurses and midwives. The NHS Wales workforce has grown by 10.4% over the last five years and we are training more doctors, nurses and allied healthcare professionals than ever before. Over the last five years, nurse training places have risen by 40% with an increase across all four fields of nursing. Health visitor training places have increased by 30%, midwifery training places by 71%, and district nursing by 95%. Over the same period the quota for GP training places increased from 136 to 160 with 186 places filled this year. We remain committed to investing in our dedicated NHS workforce and never transfer NHS staff to subsidiary companies to undermine terms and conditions. Under a Labour government, Wales was the first country in Europe to legislate for nurse staffing levels and has maintained a bursary for student nurses, midwifes and allied health professionals. A UK Labour government will guarantee year on year above inflation pay rises; enabling us to extend the implementation of this radical safe nurse staffing legislation. A Labour government will help us recruit more of the staff we need by removing the obstacles to ethical international recruitment. **Medicine** Prescriptions remain free in Wales whilst fees in England now stand at £9.00 per item. £80 million has been invested in our ground breaking new Treatment Fund which was a key manifesto commitment from the Assembly election in 2016, meaning that the most advanced drugs and treatments for cancer and other life threatening illnesses become available to patients in Wales on average only 13 days after approval. Our 10 year plan for health and social care in Wales recognises the importance of earlier detection and intervention. Precision medicine, including advanced diagnostics and personalised therapies, will play a key part in this. The NHS will be at the forefront of the development of genomics and cell therapies. Welsh Labour is committed to ensuring that people in Wales are able to benefit from these new treatments for conditions such as cancer and dementia as they become available. We will increase investment and support the development of new, fair and value based cost models and will play an active role in medical innovation, ensuring rewards and incentives match the areas of greatest health need. A UK Labour government will establish a generic drug company and use the Patent Act provisions and compulsory licences if fair prices are rejected for patented drugs. **Social Care** Welsh Labour has been very clear – our NHS is not for sale and should not be sold off in any trade deal. A UK Labour government will ensure that all parts of the NHS, the treatment of patients, the employment of staff and medicine pricing are all fully excluded and protected from any international trade deals. We will progress clinically appropriate prescription of medical cannabis. The Welsh Labour government has met its commitment to invest more per head on social care than in England. We have delivered on our key pledge to more than double the capital limit from £24,000 to £50,000. This is the amount of money people can keep before they are asked to pay for care. The level in Wales is now much higher than anywhere else in the UK. We have maintained a cap on the amount local authorities can charge for homecare and other non-residential social care and support. This ensures a person cannot be charged more than £90 per week for all non-residential care. This only applies to people with high levels of income or capital. Those on low incomes continue to pay a lower charge or no charge at all. Through our Integrated Care Fund we are supporting health and social care partners to work together to identify and meet the social care needs of the population including brokering more care from social enterprises and cooperatives or through direct delivery. The Welsh Labour government is committed to ensuring that people who need social care are able to access a quality service. We have devoted an increasing share of our own resources to social care. We spend £3,051 per person every year on health and social services - the highest of the four UK countries. Welsh Labour is clear that people should not have to pay for the care they need and if funding allowed, would make more care available for free. A UK Labour government will deliver a significant boost to the funding available to the Welsh government. With this additional resource we would engage with people and communities to inform our approach to extending free social care. The Welsh Labour government has committed to making Wales a fair work nation. We have regulated to end compulsory zero hours contracts for care workers and ensure care staff are paid for travel time. Mindful of the forthcoming UK Supreme Court judgment on care worker sleepover pay, we will abide by the court’s ruling and ensure there are no consequential disruptions to service provision. A UK Labour government will increase the Carers Allowance for unpaid full-time carers. ### Education **Education makes our economy stronger, our society richer and our people more fulfilled. Whether it’s businesses finding people with the right skills, a tech start-up making our economy more dynamic, or more people in better paid work and able to contribute to public services, we all benefit from an educated society.** But education isn’t just of value to our economy – it lets people develop their talents, overcomes injustices and inequalities and helps us understand each other and form social bonds. Welsh Labour is fundamentally committed to the We haven’t lost which in Wales give individuals to grow and to long-term one, being put in place attainment, standards our learning environments. comprehensive that selection system. Welsh model of free as simply another money. Welsh sight of the value of education, is undergoing significant reform to of all ages the opportunity to learn, thrive. Our reform programme is a but it’s clear the ambitious policies are having a positive impact on and the physical fabric of principle of education and believes has no place in the Welsh education Labour completely rejects the Tory schools in England which sees schools place for the private sector to make Labour believes that schools should **Early Years** be supportive places, open to young people from every background. In government, Welsh Labour has done everything in its power to mitigate the impact of Tory austerity on schools in Wales. While things have been tough, Welsh Labour has tried to ensure that every part of our education system gets the funding it needs to succeed. We are delivering on the commitment to make available over £100m of additional funding for Welsh schools in this Assembly term and a Welsh Labour government will work with a UK Labour government to increase funding for education. Early years education is vital to children’s development. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds start falling behind their peers before they even start school. Early years education also helps parents – usually mothers – by providing a bridge between maternity leave and school. Our Welsh Labour government is fundamentally committed to ensuring that children and young people have the best possible start in life and every opportunity to develop their abilities and talents. The Welsh Labour government’s Healthy Child Wales programme ensures equitable access to consistent universal health services for children up to the age of seven. Against a backdrop of falling rates of child immunisation, take up in Wales remains consistent at around 95%. The Welsh Labour government’s flagship early years Flying Start programme has been available to all children living in relative areas of deprivation since 2007 and to children in need living outside those areas since 2014. About 36,000 children in Wales each year benefit from the programme which offers free part-time childcare for two to three-year-olds, an enhanced health visiting service, access to parenting support and access to early language development support. With additional funding unlocked through a UK Labour government, the Welsh Labour government will build on the success of Flying Start by extending and enhancing the offer it makes to children and families living outside current catchment areas. As well as the high quality early education offer for three and four-year-olds in Wales through the Foundation Phase, the Welsh Labour government’s childcare offer was a flagship promise from the 2016 Assembly elections that we have been proud to roll out ahead of schedule. It provides working parents in Wales with a mixture of childcare and early education for children aged 3 or 4. Welsh Labour wants our early years education and care system to continue to develop to be able to provide more support for the children who need a little extra help. We want to create a system which helps our language and culture to thrive and increase the number of children able to access Welsh language or bilingual education services. Our new approach to early childhood education and care will be built on these foundations and at its core is the aim that all children will have a high-quality stimulating learning and care experience in any education and care setting they attend. Additional funding from a UK Labour government will help us to do this. A UK Labour government will also enhance the rights and support available to families through the extension of paid maternity leave to 12 months. The Welsh Labour government has been proud to support the Free Breakfast in Primary Schools programme and we will ensure it continues to benefit schools and families right across the country. **Schools** The changes Welsh Labour have put in place in our schools have been focused on re-shaping school improvement, improving literacy and numeracy standards across the board, supporting professionals at the frontline and providing additional funding for learners from the poorest backgrounds. Major reforms have included the introduction of school categorisation, funds to support class size reduction and new accreditation criteria for initial teacher training providers. The hard work put in by the Welsh Labour over many years shows in the gradual improvement of exam results across Wales. This year’s GCSE results in 2019 showed overall performance continuing to increase and at A-Level, Wales is now ranked first for A* compared to the English regions and Northern Ireland. Welsh Labour has already begun the next phase of its reform programme for schools through the creation of the first, made-in-Wales curriculum. The Welsh government has published the implementation plan ‘A curriculum for Wales – a curriculum for life’, setting out in detail how schools and professionals are to build the exciting new curriculum. The support for implementation of the new curriculum is being delivered through a network of Pioneer Schools. A draft version of the curriculum has been published, with first formal teaching by 2022. Welsh Labour will continue to support the rollout of the new curriculum through the next decade and will make investments that support the creative development of students. This will include building on the National Endowment for Music to enable more young people to access musical opportunities. The most effective way to deliver the new curriculum and to improve educational outcomes for young people in the round is to ensure that those working at the front line – teachers, lecturers and classroom assistants – are supported with effective, accredited and robust professional development. Welsh Labour is committed to supporting professionals through the new curriculum process with high quality professional development for the existing workforce. We will see through the ambitious changes being made to Initial Teacher Education and training to ensure new entrants to teaching are ready to deliver the new curriculum. Leadership is critical to the success of any school or college and Welsh Labour is supporting leaders at all levels and at whatever stage they are of their careers—whether they are taking the first steps into formal leadership or are experienced leaders. We will build on the new and innovative Masters in Educational Practice which is helping to improve skill levels of the teaching workforce and develop the new National Academy for Educational Leadership. As the Tories in England have dismantled the national framework for pay and conditions, Welsh Labour has been proud to work with trade union colleagues to successfully devolve teachers’ pay and conditions to maintain a common, national approach. Welsh Labour will continue to work in social partnership with trade unions to retain the confidence of the workforce and improve recruitment, training and retention of those working across all parts of the education sector. Welsh Labour has taken action to ensure that young people are not disadvantaged in education because of their backgrounds or their family circumstances. Welsh Labour has supported the poorest pupils through the Pupil Development Grant, now worth £1,150 per pupil. It has also doubled the early years Pupil Development Grant with a sum of £700 per child now being made available to Foundation Phase providers in both the maintained and non-maintained sector. It’s been Welsh Labour that has maintained funding support to help the poorest families with the cost of School Uniforms and developed a ‘holiday hunger’ pilot scheme aimed at supporting low income families during the holidays. In government, we will accelerate this work to support those from the most deprived backgrounds in school, including utilising school and college buildings to support learners and their families more effectively. Utilising additional funding from a UK Labour government, the Welsh Labour government would look to extend further entitlement for free school meals. Welsh Labour will continue to look across the world to support evidence-led school improvement right across Wales. A key part of our focus will be to ensure mental health and pastoral support in and around education is enhanced and developed, working with schools to more effectively support the challenges many young learners face. A UK Labour government will deliver additional funding to Wales to help rebuild youth services, providing every young person in Wales with access to local high quality youth work. Nearly a quarter of learners in Wales have some form of additional learning need. That is why in 2018 the Welsh Labour government successfully passed the Additional Learning Needs and Education Tribunal Act which aims to transform the system in Wales for supporting children and young people aged 0-25 years with additional learning needs. The Bill responds to concerns from families who say the current system is inefficient, bureaucratic and costly and is not child-centred or user-friendly. We are committed to successful implementation of the Act. Welsh Labour has set an ambitious target to see the numbers of people being able to enjoy speaking and using Welsh reach a million by 2050. This is a challenging ambition, but a challenge that is worthwhile and necessary if we are to secure the vitality of the Welsh language for the benefit of future generations. We are committed to the bold changes needed to achieve this ambition by increasing the use of Welsh including in the workforce and by supporting the infrastructure and conditions in which the language can thrive. We are increasing the number of Welsh learners in statutory education and will help each learner develop skills in Welsh to a standard which will enable them to use the language in their everyday lives. Welsh Labour will work with local authorities across Wales to effectively measure and meet the demand for Welsh-medium education. Welsh Labour’s commitment to education is most visible in the transformative school and college building programme we have brought in over the last decade. Through the 21st Century Schools Programme the Welsh Labour government, working with partners in local government, has put in place the biggest capital investment programme our school and college system has ever seen. By 2023 Welsh Labour will have invested, alongside local government, nearly £3.7bn in new and refurbished schools and colleges, transforming outcomes for learners and supporting the workforce. Welsh Labour is already taking action to remove the tax concessions made to private schools in Wales. **Further Education and Skills** With automation and the Green Industrial Revolution bringing major changes to industry, it is more important than ever that people have the opportunity to retrain and upskill throughout their lives, and the social, functional and creative skills to help them adapt. In recent years the Welsh government has done a huge amount to improve the quality of Further Education in Wales. The sector has a significant role to play in enabling young people and adults to fulfil their potential and in delivering a skilled workforce and quality has been rising. Success rates for activity within Welsh colleges now stands at over 80%. Welsh Labour is committed to enhancing support for learners in further education, establishing clearer learning pathways and providing better information on the options available to students of all ages. Funding for Educational Maintenance Allowances (EMAs) has been maintained at £30 per week - scrapped by the Tories in England. Welsh Labour will protect the EMA. Welsh Labour is developing a new strategic authority to oversee skills, funding for research and the higher and further education sectors in Wales. The plans will build on the work of the Hazelkorn review which suggested establishing a single regulatory, oversight and co-ordinating authority for the post-compulsory education sector. Establishing one arm’s length body to oversee the whole of post-compulsory education will improve strategic planning and help to prevent duplication and gaps in provision. It will promote collaboration between institutions and strengthen links with others, including schools and businesses. Welsh Labour will use new technology to support people to upskill throughout their lives and explore new ways to support lifelong learning. It will use the learning from the recent Welsh Labour government trial of new Personal Learning Accounts and increased funding from a UK Labour government to support greater investment in adult learning and by giving more opportunities to individuals to re-train throughout their lives. **Higher Education** Over the last few years the Welsh Labour government has worked with partners across Wales to transform student finance in Wales. Through the cross-party Diamond Review the Welsh Labour government has been able to ensure that students in Wales receive the equivalent of the National Living Wage in maintenance during term time while they study. The Welsh student support package is now the most generous scheme in the UK and students from Wales do not have to pay loans until they’re earning over £25,000 a year. Every student in Wales is guaranteed a minimum level of maintenance support and all eligible full time students receive a non-means-tested maintenance grant of £1,000 per annum. Support for part-time students has also been re-shaped. Students now receive a loan to pay for their fees, depending on the cost of their course, as well as receiving maintenance support which consists of a non-means-tested grant of up to £500. New support for postgraduate master’s students is also being implemented. This includes a combination of loans and grants as a contribution to costs for completing a postgraduate master’s degree course, similar to the undergraduate package of support. Latest figures show a 35% increase in part-time undergraduates in Wales and a 58% increase in the number of post-graduates. Welsh Labour has always been clear that education should be free and if funding allowed, there would be no tuition fees. We also recognise that higher education operates within a UK context. When a Labour government is elected at Westminster we will undertake a further review of the impact of any changes made in England on universities and students in Wales and follow the Diamond Review model of consulting with students, universities and employers about changes in Wales. Welsh Labour will build on the success of the Seren programme it has developed to work with our universities and widen access to higher education for those from the poorest backgrounds. ### Police and Security **The primary duty of government is to keep people safe. Our communities were damaged and police officers endangered when 21,000 police officers were taken off our streets.** Recorded crime has risen, including violent crimes like knife crime which has risen to record high levels, up 80% in the last five years. Last year more than 11 million crimes were recorded, and the proportion of offences charged has fallen across all categories: and vehicle theft. Prosecutions have fallen to a record low level. Some offences have been decriminalised in practise. Only 1.4% of reported rapes are prosecuted. violence, drugs, Where the Conservative Labour government causes of crime in our communities stronger, fairer Rebuilding our on crime prevention people the best robbery, burglary, weapons possession government has failed, a will take action to address the and end the epidemic. We will invest and public services to build the society that will make us all safer. criminal justice services, we will focus and early interventions, giving chance of rehabilitation. **Police** The UK Tory government has cut police force budgets in Wales by over £160m since 2010. Despite policing remaining a UK government responsibility, the Welsh Labour government has stepped up to support safer communities, investing in 500 extra Community Support Officers. Wales is a nation of sanctuary and in the face of rising hate crime, Welsh Labour is investing to support victims through the National Hate Crime Report and Support Centre and organisations supporting BAME communities in Wales. A UK Labour government will invest in policing to prevent crime and make our communities safer, and we will enforce the laws protecting police and other emergency workers from violent assault. We will rebuild the whole police workforce, recruiting more police officers, police community support officers and police staff. We will re-establish neighbourhood policing and recruit 2,000 more frontline officers than have been planned for by the Conservatives. We will work with police forces to invest in a modern workforce to tackle the rise in violent crime and cybercrime under the Tories. To deliver these priorities Labour will work with Police and Crime Commissioners to reform police funding to share new resources fairly, and to ensure that local needs are met. The Tory approach to policing has been different: reckless, remote, authoritarian, ineffective policing-on-the-cheap. It has led to what HM Inspectorate of Constabulary described as dangerous, disturbing practices, with investigations shelved, vulnerable victims let down and dangerous suspects remaining at large. We will retain local democratic accountability for police forces and reform the police funding formula to ensure sufficient, sustainable resources are fairly allocated. We will agree resources with the police authorities to combat crime and restore community policing by consent. Effective police work requires the police to serve their communities and work collaboratively with youth workers, mental health services, schools, drug rehabilitation programmes and other public agencies. A police force working within our communities, with the capacity to gather local intelligence, is also the frontline of our domestic security, the first eyes and ears of effective counter-terrorism. We will work to eliminate institutional biases against BAME communities. Proportionate stop-and-search based on intelligence is a needed tool of effective policing, but the use of expanded powers means black and Asian men are still more likely to be stopped and searched, poisoning **Security** relations between the police and the local communities they serve. We will ensure better police training on domestic abuse and offences arising from coercive control, as well as historical abuses and other crimes neglected by the reduced forces operating under Tory austerity. A UK Labour government will establish a Royal Commission to develop a public health approach to substance misuse, focusing on harm reduction rather than criminalisation. The Welsh Labour government will consider how recommendations relating to devolved issues should inform future policy. We will introduce minimum legal standards of service for all victims of crime. We will address the failure to take effective measures against a growing problem of extreme or violent radicalisation. We will ensure closer counter terrorism co-ordination between the police and security services, combining neighbourhood expertise with international intelligence. We will ensure the powers exercised by the security services are proportionate and used in accordance with human rights. We will review the circumstances requiring judicial warrant. We will ensure agencies are accountable and strengthen the powers of the Joint Intelligence and Security Committee. We will constrain the right of the Prime Minister to suppress publication of committee reports. A Labour government will review our security strategies. We will review the Prevent programme to assess both the effectiveness and potential to alienate communities and consider alternatives including safeguarding programmes to protect those vulnerable to the recruitment propaganda and ideologies of the far-right and others who promote terror as a political strategy. We will review the Protect programme to ensure that public authorities take appropriate security measures, without alienating the communities they serve. We will evaluate the mobile phone trials with the aim of introducing an emergency alert system. We will use our diplomatic services, our aid budgets and our international standing to promote peaceful solutions to conflicts and tackle the risks arising from poverty, natural catastrophes and population displacements. Our national security is linked to global threats. We will respect international law and avoid needless military interventions. Our security co-operation arrangements with EU neighbours are essential for our safety. If the British people confirm their decision to leave, we will prioritise agreement of a new UK-EU Security Treaty. **Cyber Security** **Border Security** Cybercrime and cyberwarfare are growing, all around the world. Every aspect of our lives, from the NHS, to our nuclear facilities, from transport systems to communications networks are vulnerable. A UK Labour government, ever more dependent on digital technology, will overhaul our cybersecurity by creating a co-ordinating minister and regular review of cyber-readiness. We will review the role and remit of the National Cyber Security Centre to determine whether it should be given powers as an auditing body, with the ability to issue warnings to private and public sector organisations and designate risk. A UK Labour government will also review the structures and roles of the National Crime Agency, to strengthen the response to all types of economic crime, including cybercrime and fraud and ensure a modern, technologically advanced police service that has the capacity and skills to combat online crime, supported by a new national strategy on cybercrime and fraud. Our border security prevents serious crimes including child abduction, people trafficking, smuggling of drugs and guns, terrorism and modern day slavery. The Tories have further weakened our borders, cutting another 200 jobs over the last four years. They have failed to deliver exit checks. In place of an effective border control they have required landlord, teachers and medical staff to work as unpaid immigration officers, creating a hostile environment. A UK Labour government will review our border controls to make them more effective. ### Justice **Smarter justice requires cross-government action to reduce the impact of adverse childhood experience and to break the vicious cycle of poverty, inequality and crime.** We will champion a joined-up approach, fostering close working relationships between criminal justice agencies with education authorities, health services and others by establishing violence reduction and ensuring vulnerable people get the support they need by boosting public health, mental health and early years services. Prison mental illnesses and debts that lead many people into is not the best crime. Nine years of facing the justice government commissioned Justice Lord Thomas, Justice System October 2019 is not working The UK Conservative conclusions of place to address the drug addictions, Tory cuts have compounded the problems system in Wales. The Welsh Labour the former Lord Chief to undertake a review of the in Wales. The Commission reported in and makes it clear that the justice system for Wales. government dismissed the this landmark report within minutes of its publication. We need a UK Labour Government committed to using the report to put right the many challenges in the way the justice system currently operates in Wales. That means addressing the many anomalies in the way in which services are delivered to ensure that the system is available and accessible right across Wales. The crisis in our criminal justice system has left communities less safe, victims less supported and people less able to defend their rights. Labour will defend the rule of law. Cutting thousands of prison officers has driven record levels of prison violence. A UK Labour government will restore total prison officers to 2010 levels, and phase out dangerous lone working. We will bring PFI prisons back in house and there will be no new private prisons. We will tackle the prison maintenance backlog and develop a long-term estate strategy. The Ministry of Justice’s own evidence shows tens of thousands of crimes could be prevented if robust community sentences replace short prison sentences. We will set new standards for community sentences and introduce a presumption against prison sentences of six months or less for non-violent and non-sexual offences. We will invest in proven alternatives to custody, including women’s centres, expand problem-solving courts and plug the funding gap in the female offender strategy. We will further consider the evidence for effective alternatives and rehabilitation of prolific offenders. A Labour government will reunify probation and guarantee a publicly run, local accountable probation service. Under Labour, probation staff and professional standards will once again be properly valued. Legal aid cuts mean essential legal help is too often denied. To help people enforce their rights, we will restore all early legal aid advice, including for housing, social security, family and immigration cases. A UK Labour government will recruit hundreds of new community lawyers, promote public legal education and build an expanded network of law centres. We will ensure legal aid for inquests into deaths in state custody and the preparation of judicial review cases. We will consult on the civil legal aid means-test levels and act on the criminal legal aid review. We will defend workers’ ability to recover legal representation costs from negligent employers. We will keep the right for workers to be represented and recover their costs in cases of employer negligence leading to an injury at work. We will review the eligibility criteria for the criminal injuries compensation scheme. A Labour government will halt court closures and cuts to staff, and undertake a review of the courts reform programme. We will facilitate a more representative judiciary while upholding its independence, and review funding for the Crown Prosecution Service. We will tackle the disproportionate levels of BAME children in custody, review the youth custody estate, strengthen youth courts and build on the Lammy Review. Violence against women and girls is unacceptable as is many women’s experience of criminal justice agencies. A UK Labour government will learn lessons from the Violence against Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (Wales) Act passed by Labour in Wales which is the first legislation of its kind in the UK and the only law of its kind in Europe to include a specific focus on violence against women. The Act in Wales brings in a National Adviser on Violence Against Women, and mandatory Violence Against Women Strategies at a local and Wales wide level. Most crucially it includes preventative measures including education for children and young people, a national training framework for public sector workers, workplace policies and public awareness raising. A UK Labour government will establish an independent review into shamefully low rape prosecution rates. It will establish a National Refugee Fund, ensure financial stability for rape crisis centres and reintroduce a UK Domestic Abuse Bill. We will improve the safety of the family court system for domestic violence victims and prohibit their cross-examination by their abuser. We will introduce protections for the victims of revenge porn. Labour will introduce a no-fault divorce procedure. We will uphold women’s reproductive rights and decriminalise abortions. A UK Labour government will establish public inquiries into historical injustices including blacklisting and Orgreave, and ensure the second phase of the Grenfell Inquiry has the confidence of all those affected, especially the bereaved families and survivors. We will also consider a public inquiry in the case of Zane Gbangbola. We will require judicial warrants for undercover operations and retain the Mitting Inquiry into undercover policing. A UK Labour government will release all papers on the Shrewsbury 24 trials and 37 Cammell Laird shipyard workers and introduce a Public Accountability Bill. It will ensure fair compensation for the victims of contaminated blood products across the UK. ### Communities and Local Government **Had the Welsh Labour government budget grown in line with the economy since 2010-11 there would have been an extra £4bn to invest in public services in Wales in 2020-21. Instead, our budget for next year will be £300m lower (real terms) when compared with 2010-11.** This has been one of the biggest costs of a Tory government at Westminster. The Welsh Labour government has sheltered local authorities from the level of Tory cuts seen in England, where the most severe austerity has been deliberately targeted at the poorest areas. The Revenue Support Against this backdrop austerity, the partnership with as best it can dealt to English Grant for Wales English local Councils are and are on the public services. The Welsh Labour for an end to of ruthless Tory imposed Welsh Labour government has worked in local government to protect services from the excessive and regressive cuts councils. is larger than the whole of the RSG for authorities. the collective voice of local communities frontline in delivering many essential government has consistently called Tory austerity. Across the UK Labour will work with our local authorities to invest in the services we all depend on. The Welsh Labour government’s public service ethos has pushed back against privatisation and outsourcing during an era of ruthless Westminster imposed austerity. That’s why we have worked with trades unions in Wales to keep the Two Tier Code - abolished by the Tories in England - which exists to protect the terms and conditions of workers transferred to contractors. Welsh Labour will give 16 and 17 year olds the ability to vote in Senedd and local government elections. In the recently published Local Government Bill, the Welsh Labour government will work with local authorities as they create coordinated regional arrangements for economic development, transport, planning and educational improvement. In each region of Wales the new arrangements will bring together the public and private sector to deliver ever more productive regional activity. The aim is to transform the economic future of each part of Wales. The Welsh Labour government will utilise additional funding from a UK Labour government to explore opportunities to better support social infrastructure such as public squares, youth clubs, libraries and other vital community assets – services and facilities which are so vital to the economic and social fabric of Wales. The Welsh Labour government was proud to work with Welsh Labour’s Deputy Leader, Carolyn Harris MP, in her campaign to scrap child burial fees across the UK. By scrapping the charges Labour in Wales has led the way, offering support to families at the most painful and saddest of times. We will extend this to fully cover the cost of coffins. The future of town centres has to be about more than retail alone and needs to include investment in commercial premises, housing, leisure and public services. A UK Labour government will revive town centres by stopping bank branch closures and banning ATM charges. The Welsh Labour government will build on this by exploring a town centre first principle - reinvigorating town centres by requiring public sector and other bodies to consider town centres as the optimum location for their headquarters or next development. We have shown through the proposed move of Transport for Wales to Pontypridd that Welsh Labour can positively use the power of the Welsh government and the public sector to locate more services and office accommodation in town centre locations. These moves are important to spark vibrant and new economic development at the heart of our communities once again. To support this work the Welsh Labour government will reshape existing regeneration capital programmes as a single fund to focus on town centres and simplify the process for financial support. The Welsh Labour government has invested £40 million to bring empty properties back into use and assist owner occupiers to improve their homes. Through this fund we are on track to bring 5,000 empty homes back into use during this Assembly term and we will do more to give local authorities greater flexibility through loans to extend this work. Our approach is shifting to one that is more enforcement led, including supporting more compulsory purchase orders and providing the resources to enable local authorities use of these powers to the greatest effect. This is part of our coordinated effort to take action against those whose run down properties that blight our town centres. Half of all businesses in Wales pay no rates at all. The Welsh Labour government is providing over £230m of relief to ratepayers in Wales this year. With a different tax base, it is right that Wales designs a local tax system that meets the needs of Welsh communities. The Welsh Labour government is already looking at options for how a Land Value Tax could be applied in Wales. We will make sure the rights of consumers are enhanced and protected, that safety standards are maintained and improved, and that local authority trading standards department and other consumer protections agencies have the resources to enforce those rights and standards. A UK Labour government will stop Crown Post Office closures and bring Royal Mail back into public ownership at the earliest opportunity, reuniting it with the Post Office. In re-shaping the Post Office network, a UK Labour government will work with the Welsh Labour government to support its complementary plans for a Community Bank and ensure every community has easy access to face-to-face, trusted and affordable banking. There is a shared commitment across the Welsh Labour government to ensuring that children and young people have the best possible start in life and every opportunity to develop their abilities and talents. This includes ensuring that young people get the opportunities, guidance and experiences they need to develop personally, socially and academically. The Welsh Labour government has taken forward legislation to further promote children’s rights, giving children the same protection from physical punishment as adults have. Over the past 15 years we have seen the number of looked after children in Wales increase by 34%. A recent report by the Nuffield Foundation found that the number of new-born babies in care has increased over time and the incidence in Wales is now higher than England. This is unacceptable. All local authorities in Wales have a plan to reduce the overall number of children in care, including the number of out of county and out of Wales placements. Local authorities are working together to share learning on preventative measures and the Welsh Labour government has funded the roll out of the Reflect project which supports mothers who have had children removed. The Welsh Labour government is also working with local authorities to support residential solutions in Wales to support children with the most complex needs. ### Fire and Rescue **The number of fires in Wales has reduced since responsibility was devolved in 2005. There has been particular success in reducing the number of fires that are started deliberately – not only to grassland but also to waste, abandoned vehicles and derelict buildings.** Fire casualties have also fallen steadily, and fires in dwellings – which pose by far the greatest threat to life – had fallen further and faster here than anywhere else in Wales became the first country in the world to legislate for sprinklers systems in all new homes, a groundbreaking the UK by March The UK Labour public Fire and training, research commitment The Welsh Labour duty on the fire the most comprehensive and Northern flooding but not the Tories, there When Wales brought government provided service to buy Labour will work arrangements challenges ahead 2019. government will provide resources for a Rescue College to ensure that necessary and planning is undertaken. delivered by Welsh Labour. government has already introduced a service to respond to flooding incidents – such role in the UK. In Scotland Ireland the service is required to respond to other water rescues. In England, under is no duty at all. in the duty, the Welsh Labour £2 million extra funding to allow the new rescue boats and other equipment. to ensure that governance and funding equip fire and rescue services to face the and support a sustainable service. ### Digital, Culture, Media and Sport **Digital** Digital and technological advancements bring challenges, but also huge opportunities. Automation and Artificial Intelligence are changing workplaces and our society as a whole. The Welsh Labour government has been very clear for some time, Broadband is no longer a ‘nice to have’ or an accessory – it is an important utility and it should be treated as a universal service. The Welsh Labour government’s Superfast Cymru project is aimed at bringing access to high speed broadband to homes and businesses in Wales that would not otherwise have had it through private sector commercial programmes. The first phase of the Superfast Cymru project has resulted in superfast connectivity to over 733,000 premises across Wales. Broadband is a non-devolved area and the primary reason why our Welsh Labour government has had to step in and provide funding over the last few years to support its roll out in Wales is because the UK Conservative government has failed to do its job and provide the funding needed to reach areas where the commercial market will not provide. A UK Labour government will rectify this and deliver free full-fibre broadband to all by 2030. We will establish British Broadband, with two arms: British Digital Infrastructure (BDI) and the British Broadband Service (BBS). We will bring the broadband-relevant parts of BT into public ownership, with a jobs guarantee for all workers in existing broadband infrastructure and retail broadband work. BDI will roll out the remaining 90–92% of the full-fibre network, and acquire necessary access rights to existing assets. BBS will coordinate the delivery **Culture** of free broadband in tranches as the full-fibre network is rolled out, beginning with the communities worst served by existing broadband networks. Taxation of multinationals, including tech giants, will pay for the operating costs of the public full-fibre network. The plan will boost jobs, tackle regional inequality and improve quality of life as part of a mission to connect the United Kingdom. The Welsh Labour government recently commissioned work to provide recommendations with insights on the training and skills needed to meet the challenges of the fourth industrial revolution. A UK Labour government will enforce a legal duty of care to protect our children online, impose fines on companies that fail on online abuse and empower the public with a Charter of Digital Rights. Arts and culture drive investments and encourage tourism. The Welsh government’s support for the creative industries has not only raised the profile of Wales internationally, it has also had a positive economic impact. Film and TV productions are worth more than £100m to the Welsh economy, with 2,000 people employed full-time in this growing area. The Welsh Labour government is currently in the process of establishing Creative Wales to enhance this sector of Wales’ economy. Across the UK, Labour will work with trade unions and employers to make creative jobs accessible for all, ensuring diversity in the industries so that everyone sees themselves represented on-screen and on-stage. A UK Labour government will review the copyright framework to ensure fair remuneration for artists and content creators. A UK Labour government will make the distribution of National Lottery funding more transparent to help communities get their fair share of project funding. Labour will maintain free entry to museums, because everyone should have access to our shared heritage. Building on the success of the UK City of Culture, a UK Labour government will launch a Town of Culture competition. **Media** A UK Labour government will ensure a healthy future for our all public service broadcasters, including BBC Alba and S4C. It will protect free TV licences for over-75s. A free and fair press is vital to protecting democracy and holding the powerful to account. A UK Labour government will address misconduct and the unresolved failures of corporate governance raised by the second stage of the abandoned Leveson Inquiry. It will take steps to ensure that Ofcom is better able to safeguard a healthy plurality of media **Sport** ownership and to put in place clearer rules on who is fit and proper to own or run TV and radio stations. A UK Labour government will take action to address the monopolistic hold the tech giants have on advertising revenues and will support vital local newspapers and media outlets. It will consult media sector workers and trade unions to establish an inquiry into the ‘fake news’ undermining trust in media, democracy and public debate and on a legal right of public interest defence for journalists. Sport enriches our lives, binds communities together and helps us all to stay healthy. Sport must be accessible and run in the interests of those who participate in it and love it. In football, the professional game has become divided between the extremes of the very rich and the very poor. A UK Labour government will examine the state of the game, its governance and regulation, its ownership rules and the support and funding of the clubs that are vital to local communities. It will review the ‘fit and proper person test’ for club owners and directors and ensure that supporters’ trusts have a proper role so that the professional game is properly run for all its fans and all its clubs. A UK Labour government will legislate for accredited football supporters’ trusts to be able to appoint and remove at least two club directors and purchase shares when clubs change hands. It will regulate safe standing in stadiums and ensure that a proportion of the Premier League’s television rights income is spent on grassroots football facilities. A UK Labour government will add the ICC Cricket World Cup to the list of crown jewel sporting events that are broadcast free-to-air. It will commission an Independent Review into discrimination in sport. **Gambling** A UK Labour government will curb gambling advertising in sports and introduce a new Gambling Act fit for the digital age, establishing gambling limits, a levy for problem gambling funding and mechanisms for consumer compensations. **Civic Society** The Welsh Labour government has done its best through the decade of Tory austerity to protect third sector organisations that play such an important role in our communities. Through the Third Sector Partnership Council it will go on working with these bodies to maintain the vital work they do in our public services. ## Tackle Poverty and Inequality ### Work **Work should provide a decent life for all, guaranteeing not just dignity and respect in the workplace, but also the income and leisure time to allow for a fulfilling life outside it.** Under the Tories, pay has stagnated while insecurity and inequality are rising. Work no longer 14.3 million people where at least than before the shareholders In government, Wales a ‘fair work rewarded, fairly workplaces are rights are respected. The UK Labour poverty in our of poverty and living costs, while safety net. guarantees a way out of poverty. Of the in poverty, nine million live in families one adult works. Real wages are still lower financial crisis, while dividends paid to are up 85%. Welsh Labour is committed to making nation’ where workers are fairly heard and fairly represented - where healthy, inclusive environments and government will eradicate in-work first term by tackling the structural causes inequality, such as low pay and high raising the floor provided by our social Too many people have found themselves in a spiral of debt as wages have fallen and housing costs risen. Labour will cap the total amount that can be paid in overdraft fees or interest on a loan. We will rapidly introduce a Real Living Wage of at least £10 per hour for all workers aged 16 and over and use any savings to public finances to help small businesses manage the extra cost. The Welsh Labour government will work with social partners and a UK Labour government to take forward the Fair Work Commission’s report, which sets a blueprint for how we can use the full force of the Welsh government’s spending and procurement power to drive up the quality and availability of fair work in Wales. We are committed to increasing the number of employers accredited as Living Wage employers in Wales. We will give workers a stake in the companies they work for – and a share of the profits they help create – by requiring large companies to set up ‘Inclusive Ownership Funds’ (IOFs). Up to 10% of a company will be owned collectively by employees, with dividend payments distributed equally among all, capped at £500 a year and the rest being used to increase support for apprenticeships. The cap will rise to ensure that no more than 25% of dividends raised by IOFs are redistributed in this way. And we will explore other innovative ways of responding to low pay, including a pilot of Universal Basic Income. Growing numbers of the workforce are self-employed. While for some this brings freedom and autonomy, it can bring insecurity. Self-employed people will benefit from a broad range of our policies, from free childcare and full-fibre broadband to face-to-face lending and business support through our Development Bank of Wales and new Community Bank. We will also seek to develop tailored support and protections for the self-employed, including collective income protection insurance schemes, annual income assessment for those on Universal Credit and better access to mortgages and pension schemes. We will tackle late payments that leave small businesses and the self-employed waiting months to be paid, including banning late payers from public procurement. **Ministry for Employment Rights** Throughout history, working people in Britain have improved their lives by coming together to demand rights and protections. Even after decades in which workers’ rights have been cut back and their unions’ capacity to defend them has been slashed, the Tories believe that workers’ terms and conditions should be dictated by employers on a ‘take it or leave it’ basis. We are proud of the trade union movement’s historic achievements in giving people a voice at work through collective action. It is not just part of our history, it is also part of our future. Only by shifting the balance of power back towards workers will we achieve decent wages, security and dignity at work. We have seen what a Labour government in power can do – a Welsh Labour government passed the Agricultural Wages Act to protect farmworkers; we repealed the Trade Union Act in Wales and introduced the Code of Practice on Ethical Procurement in Supply Chains. The Welsh Labour government will introduce a ground-breaking Social Partnership Bill putting our successful social partnership approach into law and helping to deliver a fairer, a more prosperous and a more equal Wales. The next UK Labour government will transform people’s lives for the better through the biggest extension of workers’ rights in history. We will give working people a voice at the Cabinet table by establishing a Ministry for Employment Rights. We will start to roll out sectoral collective bargaining across the economy, bringing workers and employers together to agree legal minimum standards on a wide range of issues, such as pay and working hours that every employer in the sector must follow. Sectoral collective bargaining will increase wages and reduce inequality. This will also stop good employers being undercut by bad employers. We will tackle insecurity by: * G iving everyone full rights from day one on the job. * S trengthening protections for whistleblowers and rights against unfair dismissal for all workers, with extra protections for pregnant women, those going through the menopause, and terminally ill workers. * E nding bogus self-employment and creating a single status of ‘worker’ for everyone apart from those who are genuinely self-employed on their own account, so that employers cannot evade workers’ rights, and banning overseas-only recruitment practices. * I ntroducing a legal right to collective consultation on the implementation of new technology in workplaces. * B anning zero hours contracts and strengthening the law so that those who work regular hours for more than 12 weeks will have a right to a regular contract, reflecting those hours. Workers will have a right to a minimum contract of 16 hours average per week. We will help people balance work and family life by: * I ncreasing wages through sectoral collective bargaining. * R equiring breaks during shifts to be paid. * R equiring cancelled shifts to be paid and proper notice for changes in hours. * G iving all workers the right to flexible working. * E xtending statutory maternity pay from nine to 12 months. * D oubling paternity leave from two weeks to four and increasing statutory paternity pay. * I ntroducing statutory bereavement leave, guaranteeing workers time off to grieve the loss of close family members or following miscarriage. * I ntroducing a new bank holiday for St David’s Day and the other national patron saints‘ days. * R eviewing family-friendly employment rights, including rights to respond to family emergencies. We will make sure people are treated equally at work by: * R equiring employers to devise and implement plans to eradicate the gender pay gap – and pay inequalities underpinned by race, sex and/or disability – or face fines. * R equiring employers to maintain workplaces free of harassment, including harassment by third parties. * I ncreasing protection against redundancy for people wherever they work. * G iving statutory rights to equalities representatives. * Setting up a Royal Commission to bring health (including mental health) and safety legislation up to date. * E nsuring public-facing workers are protected by toughening-up the law against abuse and violence. * B anning unpaid internships. We will remove unfair and unnecessary restrictions on trade unions, allowing people to come together and speak up on issues that affect them at work. We will: * Allow trade unions to use secure electronic and workplace ballots. * R emove unnecessary restrictions on industrial action. * S trengthen and enforce trade unions’ right of entry to workplaces to organise, meet and represent their members and to recruit. * B an union-busting, strengthen protection of trade union representatives against unfair dismissal and union members from intimidation, harassment, threats and blacklisting. * R epeal anti-trade union legislation, including those parts of the Trade Union Act 2016 that still apply in Wales and create new rights and freedoms for trade unions to help them win a better deal for working people. * S implify the law around union recognition. * G ive union reps adequate time for union duties. We will develop collective income protection insurance schemes for the self-employed. We will introduce a maximum workplace temperature to protect workers and require employers to take counteracting measures. For years, the UK has been in breach of our international obligations. We will bring UK law into line with the International Labour Organisation standards it has ratified so Britain leads the world, instead of engaging in a race to the bottom. **Working Time** Time off to rest, relax and be with family is essential to a happy and fulfilling life, but workers in the UK put in some of the longest hours in Europe. Labour will tackle excessive working hours. Within a decade, we will reduce average full-time weekly working hours to 32 across the economy with no loss of pay, funded by productivity increases. We will meet this target by: * E nding the opt-out provision for the EU Working Time Directive and enforcing working time regulations. * S etting up an independent Working Time Commission to advise on raising minimum holiday entitlements and reducing maximum weekly working time. * M andating bargaining councils to negotiate reductions in working time * I nvesting to increase productivity and making sure workers share the benefits. We will keep restrictions on Sunday trading in place and review unpaid overtime. **Enforcement** Rights don’t mean anything unless they are enforced, but that is not happening under the Tories. That doesn’t just hurt workers who lose out, it is also bad for employers who follow the law and are undercut by unscrupulous competitors prepared to break it. Strong trade unions are the best and most effective way to enforce rights at work. Labour will also introduce a new, unified Workers’ Protection Agency to enforce workplace rights, including the Real Living Wage. It will be given extensive powers to inspect workplaces and bring prosecutions and civil proceedings on workers’ behalf. We will keep employment tribunals free, extend their powers and introduce new Labour Courts with a stronger role for people with industrial experience on panels. **Rewriting the Rules** Social justice also means levelling the playing field between small and big business, and ensuring that democracy and accountability are valued across society, including in the private sector. Businesses are the heartbeat of our economy, creating jobs, wealth and innovations. But the upper echelons of corporate Britain have been corrupted by a culture in which the long-term health of a company is sacrificed for a quick buck for a few: a short-term culture has seen some treasured companies asset-stripped, leaving workers, suppliers and pensioners in the lurch. Too often, the link between reward and long-term performance is broken for short-term greed. Labour will take on short-termism and corporate greed, making sure businesses are rewarded not undercut. We will rewrite the rules of the economy and ensure everyone plays by them. We will amend the Companies Act, requiring companies to prioritise long-term growth while strengthening protections for stakeholders, including smaller suppliers and pension funds. We will tackle late payments that leave small businesses waiting months to be paid, including banning late payers from public procurement. We will require one third of boards to be reserved for elected worker-directors and give them more control over executive pay – because when those who depend on a company have a say in running it, that company generally does better and lasts longer. We will introduce a broader “public interest test” to prevent hostile takeovers and asset-stripping weakening our industrial base and destroying treasured home-grown companies. And we will give workers a voice on public bodies, such as the Competition and Markets Authority. We will let struggling companies go into protective administration, so they can be sold as a going concern rather than collapsing into insolvency. Audits are vital to corporate accountability, but the auditing industry is dominated by a few players riddled with conflicts of interest. Labour will separate audit and accounting activities in major firms and impose more robust rules on auditors. We will tackle regulatory capture and streamline regulation by creating a new Business Commission, responsive to parliamentary select committees. **Social Justice Commission** Labour will usher in a new era of social justice in Britain. Everyone in our society should be able to flourish, regardless of what class or postcode they are born into, or the colour of their skin. But that’s impossible when you can’t meet your most basic needs and have to choose between eating or heating your home. Britain is one of the richest countries in the world, but under the Tories millions of people can’t make ends meet. They tell us that we shouldn’t care about inequality, because social mobility allows those who work hard to get on. But nobody becomes a billionaire through hard work alone and as inequality has grown it has become more entrenched. For Labour, the true measure of fairness is not social mobility but social justice. Implicit in the notion of social mobility is the idea that poverty and inequality are acceptable provided that some people can climb the social ladder. Social justice on the other hand, demands we end poverty, reduce inequality and create a society in which the conditions for a fulfilling life are available to everyone. Labour will replace the Social Mobility Commission with a Social Justice Commission, based in the Treasury, with wide-ranging powers to hold us and future UK governments to account. ### Women and Equalities **Labour is the party of equality, committed to achieving a world free from all forms of bigotry and discrimination. Whether campaigning on the streets or passing legislation in government, Labour is the only party to consistently stand with women, disabled people, people from ethnic minority backgrounds, and LGBT+ communities.** The Conservatives have failed to tackle society’s burning injustices. Instead they inflicted injustice after injustice on women, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) and LGBT+ communities and disabled people. More than 85% of the burden of the Tory cuts has fallen on the shoulders of women. Labour will create and Equalities, responsible for equality-impact society for women We will establish as an independent Labour government. We are guided Rights Act and been consistently The Welsh Labour UK to introduce violence against a new UK Department for Women with a full-time Secretary of State, ensuring all policies and laws are assessed in order to deliver a fairer and all under-represented groups. a modernised Women’s Commission advisory board to contribute to a UK by our firm commitment to the Human Convention on Human Rights that have attacked by the Conservatives. government was the first in the a law to tackle domestic abuse and women. A UK Labour government will **Women** ratify both the Istanbul Convention on preventing domestic abuse and the ILO Convention on Ending Violence and Harassment at work. Labour is committed to tackling discrimination wherever it occurs and in Wales we will enact the socio-economic duty – something successive Tory governments have refused to do. This will require public bodies to adopt transparent and effective measures to address the inequalities that result from differences in occupation, education, place of residence or social class. Labour will put women at the heart of our government and programme. Next year marks the 50th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act yet women still earn 13% less than men. Labour will take action to close the gender pay gap by 2030. A UK Labour government will also: * D eliver gender pay equality by making the state responsible for enforcing equal pay legislation for the first time. The new Workers’ Protection Agency working with HMRC will ensure that employers take equal pay seriously and take positive action to close the gender pay gap. Women will no longer be left to take enforcement action by themselves through the courts. * R equire all employers with more than 250 employees to obtain government certification on gender equality or face further auditing and fines. By the end of 2020, we will lower the threshold to workplaces with 50 employees whilst providing the necessary support for small businesses. * R evolutionise parents’ rights by increasing paid maternity leave from nine to 12 months, doubling paternity leave to four weeks and extending pregnancy protection. We will ban the dismissal of pregnant women without prior approval of the inspectorate. * Transform the workplace and require all large employers to have flexible working, including a menopause policy and consider changes to sickness and absence practices. * E nable positive action for recruitment to roles where employers can justify the need for more diversity and introduce a right for all workers to request flexibility over their hours from the first day of employment. * E nsure that the single-sex based exemptions in the Equality Act 2010 are understood and fully enforced in service provision. * C reate a safer society for women and prioritise domestic abuse as a health issue, introduce 10 days paid leave for survivors of domestic abuse and ensure women’s refuges receive the long-term sustainable funding they need. Misogyny and violence against women and girls will become hate crimes. * I ncrease women’s representation across the UK parliament by building on the Equality Act, passed by the last Labour government, and enact Section 106 so that all political parties publish diversity data about electoral candidates. **Race Equality** Achieving racial equality is a bedrock Labour value. It has never been more important than in the current climate. We are proud of the way our country has been shaped by the contributions, cultures and values of people from around the world. The Conservatives have fanned the flames of racism using difference to divide. They have made people from BAME communities pay the price for their failed austerity project and have scapegoated refugees and migrants. Never was this starker than with their “hostile environment”, leading to the scandalous treatment of the Windrush generation. Hate crime has more than doubled in the last five years. This is a wake-up call for all of us. Labour will ensure a pathway to economic inclusion for all, putting an end to all forms of racism and discrimination in our economy and society. Inclusion will be at the heart of our programme for government. A UK Labour government will: * S eek to end the politics of hate and commission an independent review into the threat of far-right extremism and how to tackle it. * P ut wealth and power in the hands of the many, extend pay gap reporting to BAME groups and tackle pay discrimination on the basis of race. * I mplement the recommendations of the Lammy Review to address the disparity of treatment and outcomes for BAME people within the criminal justice system. * C reate an Emancipation Educational Trust to educate around migration and colonialism and to address the legacy of slavery and teach how it interrupted a rich and powerful black history, which is also British history. Working through Welsh Labour government levers, such as the Development Bank of Wales, we will address discrimination in access to finance, which many BAME business owners face and will take action to ensure BAME and women business owners have access to government contracts and spending. On religious discrimination, we will: * S trengthen protection for religious communities and amend the law to include attacks on places of worship (including synagogues, temples, mosques and churches) as a specific aggravated offence. * R eview current levels of funding for and access to the Places of Worship Protective Security Funding Scheme, maintain funding in real terms for the Community Security Trust and consult on giving it statutory protection to ensure that religious communities have the support they need. **Disability with Dignity** Over the last 10 years, through a catalogue of punitive welfare policies, the dignity of people with disabilities has been degraded by the Conservatives. Not one, but two, UN reports describe the government having committed “systematic violations” of the rights of disabled people. More disabled people are now living in poverty and some have died because of this Tory government’s choice to make the most vulnerable pay for tax cuts for the few. Labour will end this cruelty, restoring the protections that disabled people and their families – many of whom shoulder the cost of their care – should expect in one of the richest countries in the world. Labour supports the principle of ‘nothing about us without us’. We will: * F ollow the Welsh Labour government’s example and champion the social model of disability throughout government. Through a new Department for Women and Equalities we will ensure that disabled people can be independent and equal in society, with choice and control over their own lives. * Transform the workplace for disabled people by requiring that all employers be trained to better support them, while introducing mandatory disability pay gap reporting for companies with more than 250 employees. * E nd disability discrimination and update the Equality Act to introduce new specific duties including disability leave, paid and recorded separately from sick leave. * R ecommend the Equality and Human Rights Commission prepare a specific Code of Practice on reasonable adjustments to supplement existing codes. This will provide an appropriate balance between flexibility and clarity on how ‘reasonable’ cost is determined. The code will also set timescales for implementation of reasonable adjustments to end the long and distressing delays experienced by disabled workers. * Adopt a British Sign Language Act giving BSL full legal recognition in law. We will work with employers, trade unions and public services to improve awareness of neurodiversity in the workplace and society. **LGBT+ Equality** Labour has a proud history of standing shoulder to shoulder with LGBT+ people. We abolished Section 28, equalised the age of consent, created civil partnerships, and only with Labour votes could equal marriage become law. Labour is committed to reforming the Gender Recognition Act 2004 to introduce self-declaration for transgender people, but we are not complacent about the culture shift required to make LGBT+ inclusivity a reality. The Conservatives have been slow to understand the scale of abuse and discrimination LGBT+ people face in our society. In Wales, we are changing the way schools teach sex education to focus on relationships and sexuality, including teaching about LGBT+ issues. We want to end the right to withdraw, making it a compulsory part of our new curriculum from ages three to 16. A UK Labour government will eliminate remaining areas of discrimination in law, ensuring LGBT+ people can live in safety and dignity. A UK Labour government will: * P ut LGBT+ equality at the heart of government, ensuring public services are LGBT+ inclusive and delivering on their LGBT Action Plan. * Take steps to safeguard LGBT+ rights inside or outside the EU, such as retaining and promoting the Human Rights Act. * R espond fast and firmly wherever LGBT+ people face violence or persecution internationally and appoint a dedicated global Ambassador to the Foreign Office on LGBT+ issues. Labour will work with organisations and charities already making the UK a more equal and fairer society and together we will build a country for the many, not the few. ### Migration **A Labour government will establish a humane immigration system and end the ‘hostile environment’ that caused the Windrush scandal of British citizens being deported.** Instead, our system will be built on human rights and aimed at meeting the skills and labour shortages that exist in our economy and public services. Our immigration people we need, families. Our labour shortages around the world and our culture. We will take decisive market to stop conditions and migrant workers. successive Conservative driven down wages Labour will ensure from day one, The Conservative targets has undermined system must allow us to recruit the and to welcome them and their work visa system must fill any skills or that arise. The movement of people has enriched our society, our economy action to regulate the labour the undercutting of wages and the exploitation of all workers including It is the actions of bad bosses and governments that have and working terms and conditions. all workers have full and equal rights with a Real Living Wage for all. policy of pursuing net migration our economy and our public services, refusing entry to essential key workers, including nurses. It has created a hostile environment within our communities, encouraged the demonisation of migrants and enabled the callous use of three million residents as bargaining chips in our negotiations over EU withdrawal. Moreover, the Tories have not once met their own targets. Their migration policies are a complete and damaging failure, whichever way they are looked at. We will scrap the 2014 Immigration Act, introduced by the Tories with their Liberal Democrat coalition partners. We will level up rights – not race to the bottom. We will not tolerate a two-tier system for those entitled to be here. The Windrush scandal continues to create new victims. We will end its injustices and provide fair compensation to those who have unfairly suffered. We will end indefinite detention, review the alternatives to the inhumane conditions of detention centres and close Yarl’s Wood and Brook House, from which immediate savings would contribute towards a £20m fund to support the survivors of modern slavery, people trafficking and domestic violence. We will ensure justice for migrant domestic workers and restore the overseas domestic workers’ visa. If we remain in the EU, freedom of movement will continue. If we leave, it will be subject to negotiations but we recognise the social and economic benefits that free movement has brought both in terms of EU citizens here and UK citizens abroad – and we will seek to protect those rights. In accordance with our values and domestic laws, we will uphold the right to a family life for British, EU and non-EU residents alike. We will end the deportation of family members of people entitled to be here and end the minimum income requirements which separate families. **Refugees** Refugees are victims of wars, environmental catastrophes, famine or persecution. This Tory government has failed its international legal obligations to refugees and to allow people to exercise their rights to seek asylum. A UK Labour government will uphold those rights and meet those obligations. We will work with others to resume rescue missions in the Mediterranean, co-operate with the French authorities to put an end to the horrific camps and establish safe and legal routes for asylum seekers. Once here, refugees will have the right to work, access to public services and will be treated humanely by government at all levels. ### Social Security **Labour holds social security in the same esteem as our health and education systems. It is there to help each of us in times of need. If someone falls on hard times – because they lose their job, get sick or lose a loved one – Labour will help them live with dignity and provide support to get them back on their feet.** While Labour wants a society in which people care for one another, the Tories are trying to pitch us against each other. The cruelty and heartlessness of the Tories has made the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) a symbol of fear. When people feel the DWP is more Under the Tories, sight of its purpose. glue that binds and, in the words social safety replaced with about harassment gone seriously this culture, replacing Department help and support the social security system has lost Poverty has become endemic, the our society together has come unstuck of the United Nations, the UK’s net “has been deliberately removed and a harsh and uncaring ethos.” than a helping hand, something has wrong. Labour will completely change the DWP on day one with a for Social Security, which will be there to people, not punish and police them. **Universal Credit** The Welsh Labour government was the first in the UK to incorporate the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) into law; it established the UK’s first children’s commissioner and put children at the heart of everything we do in Wales. As the UNCRC celebrates its 30th anniversary, a UK Labour government will follow that example and incorporate the convention into UK law. The Tories’ flagship social security programme, Universal Credit (UC), has been a catastrophe. It has pushed tens of thousands of people into poverty, caused families to lose their homes and forced parents to visit foodbanks in order to feed their children. Labour will scrap UC. We will immediately stop moving people onto it and design an alternative system that treats people with dignity and respect. Our ambition will be to end poverty by guaranteeing a minimum standard of living. We will start developing this system immediately. But we have learned the lessons from Tory failure – major policy change can’t be delivered overnight, especially when people’s lives depend on it. So we will also implement an emergency package of reforms to mitigate some of the worst features of UC while we develop our replacement system. We will end the five-week wait by introducing an interim payment based on half an estimated monthly entitlement. We will immediately suspend the Tories’ vicious sanction regime and ensure employment support is positive not punitive. We will stop 300,000 more children from falling into poverty by scrapping the benefit cap and the two-child limit, so ending the immoral and outrageous “rape clause”. A UK Labour government will protect women in abusive relationships by splitting payments and paying the child element to the primary carer. It will make it easier for people to manage their living costs by introducing fortnightly payments and paying the housing element directly to landlords. The Conservative’s “digital only” approach is excluding vulnerable people. Labour will end the digital barrier and offer telephone, face-to-face and outreach support. We will recruit 5,000 additional advisors to deliver this. Tory cuts are pushing people into rent arrears and leaving them at risk of homelessness. A UK Labour government will stop housing costs running away from benefits by scrapping the bedroom tax and increasing the Local Housing Allowance. **Disabled People** The Labour Party stands with and for disabled people. We will always challenge stigma and discrimination wherever it is found and support the right of disabled people to live independently and be treated with respect. The Tories’ rhetoric of ‘scroungers’ and ‘skivers’ has whipped up hatred of disabled people, with disability hate crime skyrocketing, up 37% in the last year alone. Labour will never demonise disabled people or the unemployed. Labour follows the social model of disability – it’s not people’s condition or impairment that disables them but society’s failure to adapt to those conditions and impairments. We are committed to removing the barriers constructed by society and ensuring that disabled people can participate fully and equally in our society. The Conservatives have created a hostile environment for disabled people, who have borne the brunt of Tory cuts. The United Nations has said that the Tories have systematically and gravely violated disabled people’s rights by denying them the support they are entitled to. Labour will end this hostile environment. We will give effect to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities into UK law and amend the Equality Act to reflect the social model of disability. We will stop the dehumanising Work Capability and PIP assessments, which repeatedly and falsely find ill or disabled people fit to work, and make sure all assessments are done in-house. Social security is meant to help disabled people cope with the additional costs and disadvantages they face. But the Tories have cut back that support to inadequate levels. Time and again disabled people have had to fight through the courts to receive the support they are entitled to. Building on the ground-breaking Social Services and Wellbeing (Wales) Act, which tailors support around individuals’ needs, a UK Labour government will make sure people who are ill and disabled receive the support they need to lead full, independent lives. We will: * I ncrease Employment and Support Allowance by £30 per week for those in the work-related activity group. * R aise the basic rate of support for children with disabilities to the level of Child Tax Credits. * I ncrease the carers’ allowance to the level of jobseekers’ allowance. We will help disabled people who want to work by bringing back specialist employment advisors, introducing a government-backed Reasonable Adjustments Passport scheme to help people move between jobs more easily, and reviewing support for disabled people at work, including the Access to Work scheme. **Pensions** People work hard for most of their lives and deserve a decent retirement free of financial stress and insecurity. Under the Tories, 400,000 pensioners have been pushed into poverty and a generation of women born in the 1950s have had their pension age changed without fair notification. This betrayal left millions of women with no time to make alternative plans – with sometimes devastating personal consequences. Labour recognises this injustice and will work with these women to design a system of recompense for the losses and insecurity they have suffered. We will ensure that such an injustice can never happen again by legislating to prevent accrued rights to the basic state pension from being changed. The Conservatives have repeatedly raised the State Pension Age despite overseeing a decline in life expectancy. Labour will abandon the Tories’ plans to raise the state pension age, leaving it at 66. We will review retirement ages for physically arduous and stressful occupations, including shift workers in the public and private sectors. We will maintain the ‘triple lock’ and guarantee the Winter Fuel Allowance, free TV licences and free bus passes as universal benefits. Thanks to automatic enrolment, which was introduced by the last UK Labour government, record numbers of employees are now in workplace pension schemes. But too many people are still not saving enough for a comfortable retirement. We will stop people being auto-enrolled into rip-off schemes and seek to widen and expand access for more low income and self-employed workers. We will establish an independent Pensions’ Commission, modelled on the Low Pay Commission to recommend target levels for workplace pensions. We will create a single, comprehensive and publicly-run pensions dashboard that is fully transparent, including information about costs and charges. We will legislate to allow the CWU-Royal Mail agreement for a collective pension scheme to proceed and allow similar schemes. Labour has listened to the NUM and in government will end the injustice of the state taking 50% of the surplus in the Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme and introduce new sharing arrangements so 10% goes to government and 90% stays with members. This new sharing arrangement will also apply to the British Coal Staff Superannuation Scheme. We will ensure the pensions of UK citizens living overseas rise in line with pensions in Britain. ### Housing **Everyone has the right to a decent, warm and safe home. But too many people are being denied this right.** Under the Tories, housing has ceased to be a public responsibility. The Right to Buy and Right to Acquire, while helping people to buy their own home, have resulted in the loss of around 140,000 council homes and 3,600 housing association properties in Wales – almost half of Labour will keep make ownership we have set potential of public with a UK Labour or lose it’ taxes We will not ignore to see that value development. highest bidder We are committed proud of. We the housing stock. the Land Registry in public hands, and of land more transparent. In Wales, up a public land division to unlock the land for development. We will work government to introduce new ‘use it on stalled housing developments. the value of our assets – we want reflected in ambitious plans for The days of selling off assets to the are over. to creating places we can be will make brownfield sites the priority for development and protect the green belt in Wales. We will continue to restrict housing development in flood risk areas. Place-making is at the heart of our national planning policy. We have an integrated approach to development so communities have easy access to the services they need. But we don’t just want to build houses in sustainable, well-connected places, which are attractive and engaging places to live – we also want high-quality design. It’s our ambition that all housing should have the same high-quality standards of space and energy efficiency. We want all homes built in Wales to meet the needs of future generations and be zero-carbon, helping the environment and lifting households out of fuel poverty. Our £90m Innovative Housing Programme is exploring new ways of building homes to respond to climate change and new construction developments. Decarbonisation brings with it new opportunities to create jobs, develop new skills and training and new supply chain opportunities throughout Wales. We are committed to building and maintaining safe homes and have taken action to rebuild confidence in the industry, following the Grenfell tragedy. We have identified all high-rise residential buildings with non-compliant ACM cladding in Wales. Cladding has either been removed or replaced or plans are in place to do so. The costs are not being borne by individual leaseholders. Labour in Wales introduced world-leading legislation in 2016 to ensure all new and converted homes in Wales are fitted with sprinklers and we are promoting the retro-fitting of sprinklers in existing buildings. We will develop a new low cost loan scheme to support the retrofitting of sprinklers in blocks of flats. **Council and Social Homes** The only way to deliver on everyone’s right to a home is to build publicly-funded social housing. We have protected council homes in Wales by ending the Right to Buy and we are proud we have helped councils build again. We are investing more than £1.7bn this Assembly term to build 20,000 new affordable homes in Wales – double the number in the fourth Assembly term. Social housing is our top priority and we want to build on and strengthen the work already started with local authorities, housing associations and the construction industry. Our approach is to substantially increase the supply of social housing for rent including council houses. However, we support a UK Labour government’s commitment to scrap the definition of ‘affordable’ – set as high as 80% of market rents – and replace it with a definition linked to local incomes. **Home Ownership** Home ownership is still out of reach for too many people. We are committed to ensuring at least half of all new housing developments in Wales are truly affordable. Help to Buy Wales has helped more than 9,500 households since 2014 buy a new-build home, helping to stimulate growth in the house building industry and associated supply chains. This has helped people get on the property ladder. The Welsh Labour government will explore opportunities to make changes to the scheme so home buyers and builders can continue to benefit from our support, while we ensure some of our other housing objectives are being achieved. The Welsh Labour government funds local authorities to bring empty homes back into use and is on track to achieve its 5,000 target. In 2017, we legislated to enable councils to charge a premium of up to 100% of the standard rate of council tax on second homes and long-term empty homes. Wales remains the only part of the UK, which has given local authorities these powers. The actions already taken by a Welsh Labour government to address the abuse of leasehold has virtually eradicated Welsh government schemes being used for new leasehold houses. We have asked the Law Commission to urgently investigate how leasehold rights can be extended in Wales. We will work with a UK Labour government to protect freeholders’ rights on privately-owned estates. **Private Renters** Tenants need peace of mind when renting a property. Everyone should feel secure in their own home and be able to plan ahead for the future. We banned letting agents fees in September 2019, saving tenants in Wales an estimated £200 per tenancy. A UK Labour government will control the cost of renting. In Wales, we will use our powers to meet Wales’ unique needs whilst at the same time getting rid of the discriminatory rules that require landlords to check people’s immigration status or that allow them to exclude people on housing benefit. Welsh Labour introduced Rent Smart Wales – all private rented property in Wales and their landlords are registered and all self-managing landlords and agents who let and manage property are licensed. We support UK Labour’s commitment to fund new renters’ unions in every part of the country – to allow renters to organise and defend their rights. The Welsh Labour government has been proud to take action to end the scandal of unfair, no-notice evictions. **Homelessness** No one should be sleeping without a roof over their head in one of the richest countries in the world. The Tories’ cuts to welfare and a decade of austerity have caused an explosion in homelessness and people rough sleeping. We are committed to preventing all forms of homelessness – and where it cannot be prevented – ensuring it is rare, brief and un-repeated. We have invested more than £20m to prevent and relieve homelessness this year, supporting a range of statutory and non-statutory services. We will re-shape homelessness services around a rapid re-housing approach – moving the focus towards long-term housing-led solutions. We have made a significant start with our Housing First programme and we are committed to taking a whole-system approach to homelessness prevention. We have established a homelessness action group, which has provided immediate advice about the actions we can take to address rough sleeping this coming winter in Wales. We will work with a UK Labour government to tackle some of the wider causes of homelessness, including raising the local housing allowance, to repeal the Vagrancy Act and amend anti-social behaviour legislation to stop the law being used to harass people because they are homeless. ### The Constitution **For many people, politics doesn’t work. The Westminster bubble is a world away from their daily lives. The Labour Party was founded to give working class people a voice in politics.** A UK Labour government will act immediately to end the hereditary principle in the House of Lords, and work to abolish the House of Lords in favour of Labour’s preferred option of an elected Senate of the Nations and Regions, but we also believe that the people must be central to historic The renewal recommendations Convention, will answer crucial in the UK today, to each other put power in Only a Labour devolved United make it fit for Brexit has only reform of the Labour’s constitutional political changes. of the UK Parliament will be subject to made by a UK-wide Constitutional led by a citizens’ assembly. This Convention questions on how power is distributed how nations and regions can best relate and how a Labour government can best the hands of the people. government will safeguard the future of a Kingdom, reforming the way it works to the future. accentuated the need for fundamental way the United Kingdom operates. convention will include consideration of the Welsh government’s 20 point plan for the future of the United Kingdom, reflecting the new realities of a devolved United Kingdom. Alongside this work, we need long-term reform of how the UK allocates public expenditure to ensure that it reflects the needs of different parts of our country and that no nation or region of the UK is unfairly disadvantaged. A UK Labour government will work with devolved governments to complete the review of the current inter-governmental machinery which is already underway and overhaul relations between the UK government and Westminster and the devolved governments and legislatures in a way which fully respects the vital constitutional role of the Senedd and the Welsh government. Our democratic revolution will also extend to elections. A UK Labour government will repeal the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act 2011, which has stifled democracy and propped up weak governments. It will maintain 650 constituencies and respond objectively to future, independent boundary reviews. Building on the measures already being taken in Wales, a UK Labour government will oversee the largest extension of the franchise for UK general elections in generations. A UK Labour government will follow the lead in Wales and reduce the voting age to 16 in general elections, giving full voting rights to all UK residents and making sure everyone who is entitled to vote can do so by introducing a system of automatic voter registration. It will abandon plans to introduce voter ID which has been shown to harm democratic rights. **Tackling Vested Interests** A UK Labour government will change how politics is funded, banning donations from tax avoiders and tax evaders and closing loopholes that allow the use of shell companies to funnel dark money into politics. It will free the voices of civil society by repealing the Lobbying Act 2014 and overhauling the rules that govern corporate lobbying. It will introduce a lobbying register covering both in-house lobbyists and think-tanks and extending to contacts made with all senior government employees, not just ministers. A UK Labour government will increase the financial penalties available to the Electoral Commission and require imprints for digital political adverts. A UK Labour government will stop MPs from taking paid second jobs and replace ACOBA, the business appointments committee, with a sufficiently resourced and empowered new body, governed by a diverse and representative board and established in law. We will also overhaul the system of ministerial appointments to public office. A UK Labour government will bring greater transparency by extending Freedom of Information rules to cover **Wales** private providers of public services, setting new standards of consistent disclosure practice and ending the 6 months time-limit in which the Information Commissioner can prosecute the deliberate destruction of public records. Labour’s constitutional convention will include the Welsh government’s 20-point plan for the future of the UK to better recognise the realities of a devolved UK. Alongside this work, we need long-term reform of how the UK allocates public expenditure to ensure that it reflects the needs of different parts of our country and that no nation or region of the UK is unfairly disadvantaged. Labour in Wales has pioneered the social partnership approach. With a UK Labour government investing an extra £3.4 billion in Wales, and a UK Ministry for Employment Rights we will be able to do much more. Wales led the first industrial revolution and with a Labour government in Westminster, we will be at the forefront of the Green Industrial Revolution of the future. We will create jobs in Wales through environmental energy schemes such as the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon project. The Tories have let down the people of Ynys Môn by failing to deliver the Wylfa project. Labour will work with people on the island to maximise its potential for new nuclear energy, alongside investment in renewables. Nine years of Tory cuts have done untold damage and the Thomas Commission on Justice in Wales is clear that the justice system is not working for Wales. Labour governments in Wales and Westminster will work together, using the Commission’s report, to put that right. Three years on from the 2016 EU referendum we understand much more about how Wales will be uniquely exposed to a hard Brexit. Only Labour will put this decision back in the hands of the people, and in Wales the Welsh Labour government will campaign to remain. **Northern Ireland** The Good Friday Agreement and long-term peace in Northern Ireland is one of the great achievements of Labour in government. Therefore, as a priority, Labour will work quickly and tirelessly to secure the return of a genuine power-sharing government in Northern Ireland. The devolved power-sharing institutions have not been running in Stormont for over 1,000 days. During this period people have suffered in the face of a funding crisis as austerity continues to damage public services, which Labour will resolve. Working with a new assembly and power-sharing government, Labour will invest an extra £1.9 billion to end austerity and rebuild public services in Northern Ireland. **Scotland** Women in Northern Ireland should have access to abortions in Northern Ireland. A Labour government will fully implement new laws on equal marriage in Northern Ireland so that same-sex couples are no longer treated as second-class citizens. We will work with all major parties in Northern Ireland to provide a good platform for the restoration of devolution alongside bringing forward and implementing a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland as outlined in the Good Friday Agreement. A Labour government will also protect Northern Ireland and its people in any future Brexit outcome by ensuring that there is no return to a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland or the creation of a regulatory border down the Irish Sea. Labour in government will give around 700,000 Scottish workers a pay rise when we introduce a Real Living Wage of £10 an hour. We will also provide Scotland with at least £100 billion of additional resources over two terms. This investment will transform Scotland’s people, communities, public services and industries. As part of that additional resource Labour would want to see £10 billion from our new National Transformation Fund invested in the building of 120,000 council and social homes in Scotland over the next ten years, ending the housing crisis and creating up to 50,000 jobs. This is the difference a UK Labour government would make to Scotland. As part of our Green Industrial Revolution we will invest £6 billion in retrofitting houses across Scotland, which will help tackle the climate emergency at the same time as lowering bills, ending fuel poverty and creating 35,000 jobs. A UK Labour government will also provide the Scottish National Investment Bank, under Scottish control, with £20 billion of lending power to deliver funds to local projects and Scotland’s small businesses. Labour believes that Scottish independence would be economically devastating and it would be the many not the few who would pay the price. Scotland needs the transformative investment coming from a Labour government, not another referendum and not independence. A UK Labour government will focus on tackling the climate emergency, ending austerity and cuts, and getting Brexit sorted. That’s why in the early years of a UK Labour government we will not agree to a Section 30 order request if it comes from the Scottish government. The Tories and the SNP are failing to tackle the growing drugs crisis in Scotland. Drug deaths in Scotland have more than doubled since 2008 and more than 1,000 people died from drug misuse in Scotland in the last year. ## The Final Say on Brexit **A UK Labour government will give the people the final say on Brexit. Within three months of coming to power, a Labour government will secure a sensible deal. And within six months, we will put that deal to a public vote alongside the option to remain.** A Welsh Labour government will campaign for remain because we believe our future is best secured by remaining in the European Union. Only a Labour government will put this decision in the hands of the people to give you the final say. This will be a legally binding referendum and we will implement the people’s decision immediately. A UK Labour people decide. The Tories have in a shambles Whether people people and businesses Westminster face. The Welsh Labour necessary to by preparing government will implement whatever the failed for three years to get Brexit sorted, of repeated delays and uncertainty. voted Leave or Remain in 2016, are crying out for politicians in to finally focus on the wider challenges we government has done what was protect the interests of people in Wales as best we could for a disastrous no deal Brexit while making absolutely clear our opposition to such an outcome. Labour rules out a no deal Brexit, and a Labour government in Westminster will end the scandal of billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money being wasted on no deal preparations. No deal has never been a viable option. It would do enormous harm to jobs, rights, security and to our NHS. Labour has led the campaign to stop a no deal Brexit. A majority Tory government would pose a renewed threat of the UK crashing out with no deal. Only a UK Labour government can prevent this. A UK Labour government will rip-up the deeply flawed deal negotiated by Boris Johnson. We opposed his deal precisely because it would do such harm to workers’ rights, environmental protections and to our manufacturing industry. Boris Johnson’s deal is even worse than Theresa May’s: it would leave the UK £70bn worse off by 2029, it would give the green light to deregulation undermining UK manufacturing, and it would leave our NHS at the mercy of a trade deal with Donald Trump. This sell-out deal is unacceptable to Labour. Labour will secure a new Brexit deal – one that protects jobs, rights and the environment, avoids a hard border in Northern Ireland and protects the Good Friday Agreement and the peace process. We will also ensure that there is also no change in the status or sovereignty of Gibraltar. The deal will be based on the principles set out by the UK Labour Party over the last two years. It will include: * A permanent and comprehensive UK-wide customs union which is vital to protect our manufacturing industry and allows the UK to benefit from joint UK-EU trade deals, and is backed by businesses and trade unions. * C lose alignment with the Single Market – ensuring we have a strong future economic relationship with the EU that can support UK businesses. * D ynamic alignment on workers’ rights, consumer rights and environmental protections so that UK standards keep pace across Europe as a minimum, allowing the UK to lead the way, not fall behind. * C ontinued participation in EU agencies and funding programmes, including in such vital areas of co-operation as the environment, education, scientific research and culture. * C lear commitments on future security arrangements, including access to the European Arrest Warrant and shared databases making people safer at home and abroad. A UK Labour government will quickly secure a revised Withdrawal Agreement that provides legal protection for citizens’ rights, meets our international obligations – particularly with regard to the Good Friday Agreement – and ensures an appropriate transition period to allow businesses and citizens to adapt to any new arrangements. A UK Labour government will also secure robust and legally binding protections for workers’ rights, consumer standards and environmental protections, and ensure level playing field protections are maintained. Labour will never accept an outcome that puts rights and standards at risk. Once Labour has secured this new deal we will put it to a legally binding referendum alongside the option of remaining in the EU. This will take place within the first six months of a Labour government. Labour is the only party that can heal the harmful divisions in our communities and address the devastation caused by ten years of austerity, ruthlessly imposed on society by the Tories and Lib Dems. While other parties have exacerbated polarisation, defining everyone by how they voted in the 2016 EU referendum, Labour has consistently reached across this divide. Only Labour will deliver a final say referendum. Only Labour will offer the choice of remaining in the EU, or leaving with a sensible deal. This final say referendum will not be a re-run of 2016. It will be legally binding. A UK Labour government will implement the decision of the British people immediately. Labour will introduce legislation to facilitate this referendum and to provide legal certainty and stability following the result. We will introduce a Withdrawal Agreement and Referendum Bill, providing the legal basis to conduct and implement the outcome of the referendum. We will scrap the Brexit legislation currently proposed by the Tories and introduce new legislation that is in line with Labour’s priorities and principles to protect our economy, trade, jobs and rights. This will include new legislation to ensure support and certainty for UK farmers, the fishing industry and protection for the natural environment. Labour recognises the huge benefits of immigration to our country. Many British citizens have benefited from freedom of movement which has given them the opportunity to study, work or retire abroad. Likewise our public services and our industry have benefited from skilled workers coming here. Here in Wales, the Welsh Labour government has set out a consistent approach to managing EU migration, based on ensuring a much closer link to employment and cracking down on exploitative employers. People who come from the EU to work in our health service, our universities and our businesses are not responsible for poor wages and lack of protections in the workplace. Labour believes that citizens’ rights should never have been used as a bargaining chip in the Brexit negotiations, and recognises the huge anxiety this has caused for the three million EU nationals living in the UK and the 1.2 million UK nationals who have made their home elsewhere in the EU. A UK Labour government will end the uncertainty created by the EU Settlement Scheme by granting EU nationals the automatic right to continue living and working in the UK. This new declaratory system will allow EU nationals the chance to register for proof of status if they wish but will mean they no longer have to apply to continue living and working in this country. This will help ensure reciprocal treatment for UK citizens living in the EU. It will also prevent a repeat of the shameful Windrush scandal and avoid unnecessarily criminalising hundreds of thousands of EU nationals. In complete contrast to the shambolic mismanagement by the Tory government, the Welsh Labour government has, throughout the Brexit process, been rigorous in its use of evidence and analysis to understand and explain what is in the best interests of Wales. It is clear now that remaining in the EU is the option which best safeguards Wales’ interests. This reflects the fact that a significantly larger share of Welsh exports goes to the EU than is the case for the UK as a whole, while the Welsh economy is more dependent on sectors such as advanced manufacturing and agri-food which are critically dependent on completely barrier-free trade with our closest neighbours. For this reason, the Labour-led Welsh government has been clear that in any referendum with remain on the ballot paper, it will campaign to remain within the EU. If in a referendum the British people decide to remain in the EU, this must not mean accepting the status quo. Labour will work with partners across Europe to make the case for radical reform of the EU – in particular to ensure that its collective strength is focused on tackling the climate emergency, tax evasion and ending austerity and inequality. The EU needs a new political direction and, if the people decide the UK should remain in the EU, Labour, working with our sister parties across the EU, will lead the way to ensure that change. For too long a politically inflicted wave of austerity has damaged communities across Britain and across Europe. The most vulnerable members in our society have suffered, while the super-rich continue to be rewarded by a system that allows them to thrive at the expense of the many. This must change. If the country decides to remain, a Labour government will take a different approach and strive to ensure that the EU works for people across our communities. The EU should focus on policies that value investment, protect public services and makes those who have the most pay their fair share. If people decide to leave, a UK Labour government will work constructively with the EU on vital issues of mutual interest and to the mutual benefit of the UK and EU. But we will leave the EU. Most importantly, under a UK Labour government, you will get the final say on Brexit. ## A New Internationalism **Labour will put human rights, international law and tackling climate change at the heart of our international policies, and use our global influence to end the ‘bomb first, talk later’ approach to security. Labour will always do what is needed to protect the security of people in the UK.** International peace and security will be a primary objective of a Labour government’s foreign policy. Britain deserves better than the Conservatives’ reckless approach to complex global challenges or the outsourcing of UK foreign policy to US President Our approach will be based on our values. Within the first year of government Labour will: Donald Trump. Failed military have worsened accelerating * Introduce a prime minister to conventional Conservatives, recommendation interventions in countries like Libya security across North Africa, the refugee crisis. War Powers Act to ensure that no can bypass Parliament to commit military action. Unlike the we will implement every single of the Chilcot Inquiry. * Conduct an audit of the impact of Britain’s colonial legacy to understand our contribution to the dynamics of violence and insecurity across regions previously under British colonial rule. * Invest an additional £400 million in our diplomatic capacity to secure Britain’s role as a country that promotes peace, delivers ambitious global climate agreements and works through international organisations to secure political settlements to critical issues. ### Effective Diplomacy **Internationalism is at the core of the Labour movement. We recognise our responsibility to confront injustices we see today and to correct the injustices of the past.** We will: massacre, and hold a public review into Britain’s role * Establish a alleged complicity operation of * Issue a formal in the Amritsar * Allow the people descendants which they * Uphold the Papua and Western Sahara. We have a duty sovereignty Falklands, and nationals abroad, judge-led inquiry into our country’s in rendition and torture, and the secret courts. apology for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. of the Chagos Islands and their the right to return to the lands from should never have been removed. human rights of the people of West recognise the rights of the people of to stand up for the security and of our overseas territories, including the for the rights of our citizens and dual-and will continue fighting for justice **Human Rights** on behalf of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and other British nationals wrongly imprisoned or suffering mistreatment in captivity abroad. Human rights and international humanitarian law are fundamental pillars of a secure global system. These principles are under threat. Some of the world’s most powerful states choose to sell arms to human-rights abusing states. Conservative ministers, including Boris Johnson, have signed off well over £2 billion of arms sales to repressive regimes since June 2017. Around the world, human rights defenders and civil society activists remain vulnerable to attacks, often carried out with impunity. We will: * Immediately suspend the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen and to Israel for arms used in violation of the human rights of Palestinian civilians, and conduct a root-and-branch reform of our arms exports regime so ministers can never again turn a blind eye to British-made weapons being used to target innocent civilians. * Reform the international rules-based order to secure justice and accountability for breaches of human rights and international law, such as the bombing of hospitals in Syria, the illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip, the use of rape as a weapon of war against the Rohingya community in Myanmar and the indiscriminate bombardment of civilians in Yemen. * We will work through the UN and the Commonwealth to insist on the protection of human rights for Sri Lanka’s minority Tamil and Muslim populations. * Appoint human rights advisers to work across the Foreign Office and government to prioritise a co-ordinated approach to human rights. * Advocate for human rights at every bilateral diplomatic meeting. **Climate Diplomacy** There is no greater injustice today than countries in the Global South paying the price for a climate crisis they did not cause. Yet some world leaders, including US President Donald Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, champion a climate change denial agenda. Britain’s climate change diplomacy was respected internationally, playing an important role in securing the Paris Agreement, following the leading role the UK played in securing the Kyoto Agreement. However, Boris Johnson – who has described global warming as a ‘primitive fear… without foundation’ – has overseen a 60% cut in the UK’s global network of climate experts. **Prioritising Conflict Prevention and Building Peace** Only Labour can rebuild Britain’s leadership on the most serious threat to our shared humanity. We will: * Rebuild our climate expertise within the Foreign Office, putting climate diplomacy at the heart of our foreign policy. * Use our influence at the UN, EU, G7, G20, World Bank, the Commonwealth and other global institutions to promote policies to tackle the climate emergency. * Use our diplomatic expertise to negotiate and deliver more ambitious global targets to deal with the climate emergency, starting with COP 26 in Glasgow next year. The Conservatives have failed to play a constructive role in resolving the world’s most pressing humanitarian crises, including in Kashmir, Yemen and Myanmar, and the escalation of tensions with Iran. The treatment of the Kurdish people in Syria, including by Turkey, and of the Uighurs in China has been met with total inaction and apathy by the current UK government. In some cases, they set aside regard for international law, including refusing to criticise Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Labour is committed to a comprehensive peace in the Middle East based on a two-state solution – a secure Israel alongside a secure and viable state of Palestine. There can be no military solution to this conflict, which must be settled on the basis of justice and international law. All sides must avoid taking action that would make peace harder to achieve. That means both an end to the blockade, occupation and settlements, and an end to rocket and terror attacks. Labour will continue to press for an immediate return to meaningful negotiations leading to a diplomatic resolution. A Labour government will immediately recognise the state of Palestine. Labour will take all lawful action necessary to counter and confront all forms of terrorism, and we will advocate a long-term multinational political strategy, led by regional actors, to tackle the spread of extremism. We believe effective diplomacy can address the drivers of conflict and insecurity. We will: * Build support for UN reform, including assessing and developing democratisation initiatives, and improving the engagement of the General Assembly in decision-making to ensure its institutions are more effective at achieving peace. * Prioritise our responsibility to prevent conflict by investing in local capacities for peacebuilding in areas of conflict advocating for political, multilateral strategies for peace. * Act immediately to urge negotiations towards a political resolution to conflict wherever it arises, including in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. ### Defence and Security **The primary duty of government is to guarantee the security of people in the UK. Labour’s defence policy will be strategic and evidence-led.** Our security at home is made stronger when the security of others elsewhere is guaranteed too. An incoming Strategic Defence security challenges of hybrid, cyber take account threats of resource and violent conflict. Under the Conservatives: * B oris Johnson possible foreign democracy. * Trained army just over 74,000. * Armed forces live in sub-standard Labour government will undertake a and Security Review to assess the facing Britain, including new forms and remote warfare. This review will also of the climate emergency, and associated competition, involuntary migration refuses to publish the report into interference by Russia in UK personnel have been cut from 102,000 to and their families have been forced to accommodation. * F ailing outsourced contracts have not been terminated. Our armed forces personnel received below-inflation pay rises for seven years. The security challenges we face know no borders. Labour will increase funding for UN peacekeeping operations to £100 million. We will maintain our commitment to NATO and our close relationship with our European partners, and we will use our influence at the United Nations to support peace and security worldwide. Labour supports the renewal of the Trident nuclear deterrent. Labour will also actively lead multilateral efforts under our obligations to the Non-Proliferation Treaty to create a nuclear-free world. Labour’s commitment to spend at least 2% of GDP on defence will guarantee that our armed forces are versatile and capable of fulfilling the full range of roles and obligations. We will scrap the public sector pay cap, which resulted in a real-terms pay cut for our armed forces, ensure decent housing for forces members and their families, and guarantee better access for all forces children to good quality local schools. We will consult on creating a representative body for the armed forces, akin to the Police Federation. The Welsh Labour government is fully committed to supporting our armed forces and veterans. We will continue to fully fund the UK’s only dedicated national service to care for veterans with mental health problems – Veterans NHS Wales; fund the bespoke supporting service children in Wales fund to help armed forces families and we will continue do everything we can to promote the armed forces covenant. We will pay a lump sum of £50,000 to each surviving British nuclear-test veteran to support them and their families with the health conditions they have suffered as a result of exposure to radiation. We will also ensure that black and Asian soldiers who fought in Britain’s colonial armies receive a full apology and explore ways to compensate them for the discriminatory demob payments they received compared to their white counterparts serving at the same rank in the same regiments. The UK defence industry is world-leading and Labour will continue to work with manufacturers, unions and export partners in line with Labour’s foreign policy to support innovation in this sector to ensure it maintains its highly skilled workforce and world-class apprenticeship programme. We are committed to procurement that supports UK defence manufacturing including our aerospace and shipbuilding, alongside a vibrant supply chain that includes the British steel industry and other component manufacturing companies providing good jobs throughout supply chains. Labour will publish a Defence Industrial Strategy White Paper, including a National Shipbuilding Strategy that keeps all Royal Navy and Royal Fleet Auxiliary shipbuilding contracts in the UK, to secure a long-term future for the industry and its workers. Reducing our carbon footprint can only happen with ambitious emissions reduction targets at the Ministry of Defence, one of government’s biggest energy users. So as part of our Green Industrial Revolution, we will create a Climate Change Sustainability Committee within the department to review the feasibility of increasing the use of sustainable energy in defence, and publish a strategy to accelerate the safe and sustainable recycling of our old nuclear submarines. ### International Solidarity and Social Justice **The scale of the challenges facing our world are enormous. Conflict, climate change and a global economy rigged in favour of a tiny elite are driving instability and inequality across the world. A bold international development policy driven by social justice has never been more needed.** Labour will use Britain’s influence within the World Bank, IMF and WTO to transform the rules of the global economy so they work for the many. Unlike the Conservatives, Labour is fully committed to a standalone Department for International Development (DfID), with an aid budget of at least 0.7% of gross national income. We will introduce the We recognise and will reset Global South and equality, imperialist rule. reduction of alongside existing equality goals. For the Conservatives, is undermined as in Yemen. the need to address historic injustices our relationships with countries in the based on principles of redistribution not outdated notions of charity or inequality as a goal for all aid spending poverty reduction and gender too often humanitarian aid by their disastrous foreign policy, Under Labour, we will ensure policy coherence across our international-facing departments. Under Labour, DfID will continue to respond to the world’s biggest crises and will ensure humanitarian aid is provided according to need, not whether the UK has commerical or other interests in the country. DfID will assume a strong position in cross-government decision making, including a permanent seat on the Export Control Joint Unit responsible for licensing arms exports. Our international programme will be based on human rights and gender equality. We will: * Uphold basic rights to education, health and clean water by establishing a new Unit for Public Services within DfID, which will include increasing direct budgetary support to governments so they can build sustainable services for their citizens. * Promote fairer international tax rules and help countries in the Global South build progressive tax systems to finance essential public services. * Support trade unions internationally in their efforts to promote collective bargaining for better pay and conditions, and include binding social chapters in trade agreements to safeguard workers’ rights. * Support ongoing UN efforts to introduce a binding international treaty on business and human rights, and make companies legally accountable for failing to prevent human rights abuses or environmental damage in their operations and supply chains, including criminal liability in the most serious cases. * Implement a gender transformative approach across all our international work, including tripling funding for grassroots women’s organisations and establishing an independent ombudsman to tackle abuse in the development sector. Labour believes in climate justice. Wealthy countries like the UK bear the greatest responsibility for the climate emergency. Countries in the Global South that have done the least to cause climate change are already facing the worst impacts, such as rising sea levels, more frequent hurricanes and greater food insecurity. We have a duty to right this wrong. We will: * Provide a top-up of new and additional spending on international climate finance to bring the total to £4 billion a year, and also support international calls for compensation to those nations already suffering loss and damage. * Stop all aid spending on fossil fuel production overseas, redirecting it towards clean, renewable energy for all. * End all UK Export Finance support to fossil fuel projects, and reject any trade deals that conflict with our climate principles. Undertake a root-and-branch reform of CDC Group plc (DfID’s principal vehicle for encouraging private sector investment in developing countries), transforming it into a green development bank mandated to fight poverty, inequality and climate change. Labour respects the crucial role played by small-scale farmers the world over in guaranteeing people the right to food. We will: * Establish an aid-funded Food Sovereignty Fund to enable small-scale farmers in the Global South to gain access to land, seeds and finance, and uphold indigenous peoples’ right to land. * Support sustainable local food and agriculture markets in the fight against climate change. Labour believes human rights should drive our trade policy. We will: * Implement UK arms export controls to the highest standard, putting an end to exports where they might be used in violation of human rights or international humanitarian law. * Ensure government procurement contracts are not granted to companies that are complicit in serious human rights abuses, and require all UK trade agreements to be consistent with international humanitarian law. * Introduce legislation to ensure transparency and parliamentary scrutiny of trade and investment agreements. * Reject any trade agreements that undermine labour standards or environmental protections, and rule out UK Export Finance support to companies engaged in bribery or corruption. Labour recognises the right to essential medicines as an integral part of the right to health. We will: * Promote fairer international patent regimes that do not prevent countries from accessing essential medicines and support efforts to increase the transparency of medicines pricing so governments can negotiate fair prices. * In the long term, ensure that all medicines developed with the support of UK taxpayer money are accessible to people in the Global South.