Conservative Manifesto (2024)
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The Conservative and Unionist Party Manifesto 2024 CLEAR PLAN BOLD ACTION SECURE FUTURE
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Contents ❱Foreword3 ❱Bold actions to deliver a secure future for our country and for your family4 ❱Our plan for a secure, dynamic and growing economy5 ❱Our plan to cut taxes and protect pensions13 ❱Our plan to support families17 ❱Our plan to get more people into work and build a fairer welfare system21 ❱Our plan to give young people the opportunities and skills they need25 ❱Our plan to secure our nation from global uncertainty29 ❱Our plan to control immigration and stop illegal immigration35 ❱Our plan to deliver better health and social care39 ❱Our plan for safer streets and justice for victims of crime43 ❱Our plan for an afordable and pragmatic transition to net zero47 ❱Our plan to build more houses in the right places51 ❱Our plan to strengthen communities55 ❱Our plan to back farmers and fsheries to grow our food security61 ❱Our plan to support our rural way of life and enhance our environment65 ❱Our plan to support sport and the creative sector69 ❱Our plan to strengthen the United Kingdom71 The Conservative and Unionist Party Manifesto 2024 1
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We are restoring our economic stability after Covid and Ukraine. Infation is down, real wages are up, growth has returned – and we are cutting taxes to give working people fnancial security. This did not happen by accident. The economy is turning a corner because we built strong economic foundations before the pandemic and we have stuck to our plan. We must stick to this plan and take bold action to secure the future of our nation and society. In the next decade, we’ll face challenges to our energy and national security from foreign conficts; to our border from uncontrolled and illegal migration; to our economy from global shocks and to our society from those seeking to divide and disempower communities. Dealing with these challenges requires a clear plan and bold action. We have that plan and the courage to take the bold steps necessary to build a secure future for you and your family. A future where hard work and doing the right thing is always rewarded, not punished with higher taxes and hidden green levies, or discouraged with unconstrained welfare. A future where aspiration and opportunity are celebrated and young people always get the skills they need to succeed. A future where public services, like the NHS, serve citizens not vested interests, and every citizen upholds British values of decency, democracy and service. A future, where national, border, energy and food security are put frst, not taken for granted, and immigration is never allowed to run out of control. A future where family is always supported and communities decide their own priorities, rather than having them imposed from above. A future where we can have pride – in ourselves, in our communities and in our country. There is only one way to secure that future – and that is to vote Conservative on 4 July. We must stick with the plan – a plan that has given four million more people the security and purpose of a job, cut taxes for 29 million working people, protected pensioners with the Triple Lock, delivered more than 2.5 million homes, recruited record numbers of police ofcers to cut crime by more than 50%, recruited record numbers of teachers to help our children become the best readers in the West, delivered the largest sustained increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War and got Brexit done. The alternative is we go back to square one. To a fragile economy under Labour driven by unfunded spending, higher taxes on working families and debt piling up for future generations to pay of. And where immigration, crime and defence are not taken seriously. On 4 July, choose lower immigration, lower taxes and protected pensions. Choose a secure future with the Conservatives. The Rt Hon Rishi Sunak Prime Minister and Leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party
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Bold actions to deliver a secure future for our country and for your family To support working people and secure a stronger economy ❱ Cut tax for workers by taking another 2p of employee National Insurance so that we will have halved it from 12% at the beginning of this year to 6% by April 2027, a total tax cut of £1,350 for the average worker on £35,000 – and the next step in our long- term ambition to end the double tax on work when fnancial conditions allow. ❱ Cut taxes to support the self-employed by abolishing the main rate of self-employed National Insurance entirely by the end of the Parliament. ❱ Cut tax for pensioners with the new Triple Lock Plus, guaranteeing that both the State Pension and the tax free allowance for pensioners always rise with the highest of infation, earnings or 2.5% – so the new State Pension doesn’t get dragged into income tax. ❱ Give working parents 30 hours of free childcare a week from when their child is nine months old to when they start school, saving eligible families an average of £6,900 per year. ❱ End the unfairness in Child Beneft by moving to a household system, so families don’t start losing Child Beneft until their combined income reaches £120,000 – saving the average family which benefts £1,500. ❱ Cut the cost of net zero for consumers by taking a more pragmatic approach, guaranteeing no new green levies or charges while accelerating the rollout of renewables. ❱ Seize the benefts of Brexit by signing further trade deals, speeding up infrastructure and unblocking 100,000 homes, cutting red tape for business, and creating new fshing opportunities. To provide young people with a secure future ❱ Give young people the skills and opportunities they deserve by introducing mandatory National Service for all school leavers at 18, with the choice between a competitive placement in the military or civic service roles. ❱ Fund 100,000 high-quality apprenticeships for young people, paid for by curbing the number of poor-quality university degrees that leave young people worse of. ❱ Protect children by requiring schools to ban the use of mobile phones during the school day and ensuring parents can see what their children are being taught, especially on sensitive matters like sex education. ❱ Transform 16-19 education by introducing the Advanced British Standard, enabling young people to receive a broader education and removing the artifcial divide between academic and technical learning. To safeguard our borders and national security ❱ Boost defence spending to our new NATO standard of 2.5% of GDP by 2030, so we can protect British interests at home and abroad in an increasingly hostile world. ❱ Introduce a legal cap on migration to guarantee that numbers will fall every year, so public services are protected while bringing in the skills our businesses and NHS needs. ❱ Stop the boats by removing illegal migrants to Rwanda. ❱ Work with other countries to rewrite asylum treaties to make them ft for the challenges we face. To strengthen our communities ❱ Increase NHS spending above infation every year, recruiting 92,000 more nurses and 28,000 more doctors, driving up productivity in the NHS and moving care closer to people’s homes through Pharmacy First, new and modernised GP surgeries and more Community Diagnostic Centres. ❱ Protect female-only spaces and competitiveness in sport by making clear that sex means biological sex in the Equality Act. ❱ Deliver 1.6 million well-designed homes in the right places while protecting our countryside, permanently abolish Stamp Duty for homes up to £425,000 for frst time buyers and introduce a new Help to Buy scheme. ❱ Recruit 8,000 more full-time, fully warranted police ofcers to ensure a new police ofcer for every neighbourhood. ❱ Cut anti-social behaviour in town centres by rolling out Hotspot Policing, expanding community payback and legislating to evict social tenants who repeatedly disrupt their neighbours. ❱ Invest £36 billion in local roads, rail and buses to drive regional growth, including £8.3 billion to fll potholes and resurface roads, funded by cancelling the second phase of HS2. ❱ Back drivers by stopping road pricing, reversing the London Mayor’s ULEZ expansion and applying local referendums to new 20mph zones and Low Trafc Neighbourhoods. ❱ Champion our rural communities by backing farmers with a legal target and additional investment for food security, and protecting our best agricultural land from solar farms. ❱ Continue to directly invest in communities across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, protect the UK’s internal market and the integrity of our United Kingdom.
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Our plan for a secure, dynamic and growing economy
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In 2010 we inherited an economy in tatters, with Labour admitting themselves there was ‘no money’. We have faced three generational global economic challenges: the aftermath of the fnancial crisis; a global pandemic; and the biggest energy shock since the 1970s. Against this backdrop, since 2010 the UK has had the third highest growth rate in the G7. We have created four million more jobs, cut taxes for working people and pensioners and repaired the public fnances. The UK economy is now growing faster than Germany, France, Italy and the United States, real wages have been rising for nearly a year, infation has fallen from 11.1% to 2.3%, lower than in Europe and the US, and debt as a share of GDP is forecast to start falling next year. The plan we set out last year, to halve infation, grow the economy and reduce debt, is working. Economic security is the bedrock of any future success, which is why we have a clear plan to take the bold action needed to build a strong economy. ❱ reducing borrowing and debt; ❱ backing businesses to invest, innovate and trade; ❱ cutting taxes and reforming our welfare system; ❱ delivering world-class education; and ❱ delivering an afordable transition to domestic, sustainable energy. Reducing debt and borrowing Sustainable public fnances are essential for a strong economic plan. It was only because of the difcult decisions we took to repair the public fnances after 2010, which saw the defcit fall from 10.3% under Labour to 2.1% on the eve of the pandemic, that we were able to provide almost £400 billion of support to families and businesses to get through Covid and the energy shock. The only way to give people the peace of mind that government will be able to support them again when future shocks hit is to get borrowing and debt down. The alternative is to let borrowing get out of control, driving infation and interest rates up, and leaving our children and grandchildren to pick up the bill. In the next Parliament, we will continue to meet our fscal rules of having public sector net debt falling and for public sector net borrowing to be below 3% of GDP in the ffth year of the forecast. The measures in this manifesto are fully funded and would result in lower borrowing in 2029-30, which will be the target year for our fscal rules in the frst fscal event of the new Parliament� Backing business to invest, innovate and trade A competitive tax system The Conservative Party will always be the party of business. It is the private sector which will unlock the investment, growth and opportunities of the future. That is why a tax system that incentivises business to invest is at the heart of our economic plan. We introduced the biggest business tax cut in modern British history, which hundreds of business leaders have described as the ‘single most transformational’ measure for growth and investment. So more businesses can beneft, we will look to extend our ‘full expensing’ policy to leasing, once the fscal conditions allow. And we will not raise corporation tax. For the very smallest businesses, the four million people who are self-employed, we will abolish the main rate of National Insurance entirely by the end of the next Parliament. We will back the risk
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takers and entrepreneurs who help drive our economy. Small and medium-sized businesses are the lifeblood of our economy and we are making the UK the best place in the world to start or grow a business. We have great foundations: world-class talent, an internationally envied legal system and a business-friendly regulatory environment. We are supporting frms with a business rates support package worth £4.3 billion over the next fve years to support small businesses and the high street. We want small businesses to get a bigger share of public contracts and have improved the public sector procurement system to that end. We have made it easier and cheaper for small businesses to hire an apprentice. And we have taken 28,000 small businesses out of paying VAT altogether by raising the VAT registration threshold to £90,000. In the next Parliament, we will deliver a ten point plan to support SMEs: 1� Continue to ease the burden of business rates for high street, leisure and hospitality businesses by increasing the multiplier on distribution warehouses that support online shopping over time. 2� Keep the VAT threshold under review and explore options to smooth the clif edge at £90,000. 3� Improve access to fnance for SMEs including through expanding Open Finance and by exploring the creation of Regional Mutual Banks. 4� Take more companies out of the scope of burdensome reporting requirements� Making use of freedoms granted by Brexit, we will lift the employee threshold allowing more companies to be considered medium-sized. This is expected to save small businesses at least one million hours of admin per year. 5� Retain key tax incentives that encourage small businesses to grow, including the Enterprise Investment Scheme, Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme, Venture Capital Trusts, Business Asset Disposal Relief, Agricultural Property Relief and Business Relief. We will not increase Capital Gains Tax. 6� Promote digital invoicing and improve enforcement of the Prompt Payment Code to support small businesses with the perennial challenge of cashfow, building on our creation of the Small Business Commissioner with powers to tackle unfavourable payment practices. 7� Ensure that Basel III capital requirements do not inhibit lending to SMEs� 8� Continue our world leading programmes including the Invest in Women Task Force and the Lilac Review to encourage more female and disabled entrepreneurs. 9� Work with the British Business Bank and private sector fund managers to secure a £250 million Invest In Women Fund to support female entrepreneurs. 10� Work with public sector organisations including local authorities and NHS trusts and companies beneftting from government contracts to ensure that procurement opportunities are focused on SMEs in their local economies where possible and practical� Investing in infrastructure A Conservative Government will continue to invest in the digital, transport and energy infrastructure needed for businesses to grow. We have transformed our digital infrastructure by rolling out gigabit broadband to over a million hard to reach premises, helping to deliver high-speed internet to over 80% of the country. We are set to achieve at least 85% gigabit coverage of the UK by 2025 and nationwide coverage by 2030. Our ambition is for all populated areas to be covered by ‘standalone’ 5G mobile connectivity and to keep the UK at the forefront of adopting and developing 6G. We will spend £36 billion of HS2 savings on transport projects that will beneft more people, in more places, more quickly. Every penny saved in the North or Midlands will be spent there. Savings from our new plan for Euston,
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which will see 10,000 new homes built, have freed up £6.5 billion for transport across the rest of the country. Labour has no plan. They neither support the second phase of HS2 nor our alternative package of investment, meaning they won’t back schemes their own local leaders say will transform their areas. We will: ❱ Invest £4.7 billion for smaller cities, towns and rural areas in the North and Midlands to spend on their transport priorities. This will cut congestion and upgrade local bus and train stations. ❱ Invest a record £8.3 billion of investment to fll potholes and resurface roads. We will bring forward funding into this fnancial year and the next. ❱ Back our city regions with an additional £8.55 billion to spend on their local priorities. We will scrap rules that stop Mayors investing in strategic roads. ❱ Deliver our plan for Northern Powerhouse Rail bringing more frequent trains, more capacity and faster journeys. We have committed £12 billion on top of our HS2 savings to deliver the section of Northern Powerhouse Rail between Manchester and Liverpool. Savings from HS2 enable us to fund electrifcation to Hull and build a new station in Bradford. ❱ Boost rail connectivity in the Midlands, with £1.75 billion to fund the Midlands Rail Hub in full. This will improve journey times and deliver more frequent rail services at 50 stations, benefting over seven million people. We will upgrade the line between Newark and Nottingham to halve journey times between Nottingham and Leeds. ❱ Provide an additional £1 billion to support hundreds of new bus routes across the North and Midlands. ❱ Improve accessibility at 100 train stations, starting with the 50 stations announced in May. ❱ Deliver upgrades to railways in the South West, including the line through Dawlish, the Energy Coast Line in Cumbria and the Ely Junction scheme in East Anglia. ❱ Electrify the North Wales Main Line with £1 billion of investment and alleviate pinch points on the A75 between Gretna and Stranraer. ❱ Reopen Beeching lines and stations to reconnect communities around the country, building on the success of the Dartmoor Line in the South West. We are committed to all the schemes set out in the Network North Command Paper. This comes on top of £44 billion of funding for Network Rail over the next fve years and our investment in the Transpennine Route Upgrade, laying the foundations for Northern Powerhouse Rail. We will complete HS2 between London Euston and the West Midlands and support the growth of the rail freight sector. We have invested £40 billion in England’s strategic roads between 2015 and 2025, with further investment to come in the next Road Investment Strategy, ensuring we can deliver major roads including the Lower Thames Crossing and the A303. This is alongside the road schemes set out in our Network North plan, including the A1 between Morpeth and Ellingham. Automated vehicles will be on British roads in the next Parliament, thanks to our new world- leading legislation. We will support people to choose electric cars by ensuring our charging infrastructure is truly nationwide, including rapid charging and delivering the Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate to support manufacturers to safeguard skilled British jobs. We will support the growth and decarbonisation of our aviation sector. We will back British Sustainable Aviation Fuel through our SAF
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mandate, an industry-backed revenue support mechanism and investment in future aviation technology. We will support domestic fights including through Public Service Obligations, protecting vital routes within the UK, including to islands and remote areas. We will back our maritime sector, including shipping and ports, as it decarbonises. Recognising the current challenges with cross-Solent transport, we will establish a review to explore all options to provide more choice and drive down fares. We will foster our science and innovation expertise in the We can only achieve our infrastructure ambitions if we continue to simplify the planning system to make it easier to build, faster. We will speed up the average time it takes to sign off major infrastructure projects from four years to one. We will: ❱ Introduce reforms to outdated EU red tape to better protect nature while enabling the building of new homes, new prisons and new energy schemes. Along with the reforms to the EU’s bureaucratic environmental impact assessment regime that we have already started, these changes will speed up local and national infrastructure planning systems. ❱ Ensure any requirements to offset the impact of new infrastructure and homes on an area are proportionate, without compromising environmental outcomes. ❱ Reduce the cost of infrastructure by allowing quicker changes to consented projects. ❱ Ensure National Policy Statements are regularly updated. ❱ Focus the role of statutory consultees in the planning system on improving projects in line with clearer objectives, rather than piecemeal requirements that add delays. ❱ End frivolous legal challenges that frustrate infrastructure delivery by amending the law so judicial reviews that don’t have merit do not waste court time. space industry. Securing the UK’s position as a world leader in innovation Artifcial intelligence (AI) will accelerate human progress in the 21st century, just as the steam engine and electricity did in the 19th century. The UK is well positioned to spearhead this transformation and is already leading global work on AI safety. Over the last 14 years, the Conservatives have turned the UK into a science and innovation superpower. The UK now has the highest level of direct government funding and tax support for business research and development (R&D) of any country in the OECD. We pioneered the fastest development and deployment of the Covid vaccine. The UK has Europe’s leading tech ecosystem. We have secured improved fnancial terms to join Horizon. In the next Parliament, we will: ❱ Increase public spending on R&D to £22 billion a year, up from £20 billion this year. ❱ Maintain our R&D tax reliefs. Recent changes worth £280 million a year have simplifed and improved R&D tax reliefs, including by bringing more SMEs into scope of the relief. ❱ Continue investing over £1.5 billion in large-scale compute clusters, assembling the raw processing power so we can take advantage of the potential of AI and support research into its safe and responsible use. ❱ Push forward with our Advanced Manufacturing Plan, providing a £4.5 billion commitment to secure strategic manufacturing sectors including automotive, aerospace, life sciences and clean energy. ❱ Build on the success of our nine specialist Catapults, which support innovation and de-risk the transition from research and
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delivery, distributing £1.6 billion of funding across the country by 2028. We are proud to be the leading market for starting and growing a FinTech frm – part of our world-leading fnancial and professional services which supports the employment of almost 2.5 million people. We will build on the policies set out in the Edinburgh Reforms so that the UK continues to be the world’s most innovative and competitive global fnancial centre. We will support the City of London’s position as the leading global market through the implementation of the Mansion House reforms and measures such as a retail sale of NatWest shares. We will maintain the highest standards of consumer protection and prudential regulation to ensure there can never be a repeat of the banking crisis under the last Labour Government. The UK car industry is the jewel of our manufacturing crown. Last year the UK built over a million vehicles and secured £23.7 billion of private and public investment. We secured a £4 billion investment in a new battery gigafactory to be built in Somerset, safeguarding the future of the Jaguar Land Rover plant in the West Midlands for decades to come. Contrary to dire warnings that Brexit would lead to major brands leaving our shores. Nissan is delivering up to £2 billion of new investment to produce two new electric vehicle models in Sunderland and BMW made a £600 million investment to produce iconic all-electric Mini Coopers in Oxfordshire. We will always back our world-leading automotive industry, which faces unprecedented competition from China in the electric vehicles market. We stand ready to support domestic car manufacturers if there is evidence other countries are breaking global trade rules. Building new trade links to help British businesses thrive The UK is a global exporting superpower and is now the fourth biggest exporter in the world, having overtaken France, the Netherlands, and Japan. Having left the EU, we have seized the opportunity to negotiate trade deals that suit the UK, boosting our exports and creating jobs at home. UK exports are growing, reaching £850 billion last year and service exports are at an all-time high. We have secured trade deals with 73 countries plus the EU and last year we removed £1 million of trade barriers every single hour. Last year we signed a deal to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacifc Partnership (CPTPP), a modern and ambitious trade deal spanning economies across Asia and the Pacifc. With the UK as a member, it will account for 15% of global GDP and in time is expected to boost UK GDP by around £2 billion a year. We will complete free trade agreements with India and with the Gulf Cooperation Council, home to some of the world’s biggest investors. And we will continue to pursue free trade agreements with countries such as Israel and Switzerland. Our Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) is the most comprehensive FTA the EU has ever agreed. We will build on it, but will not agree to anything in the forthcoming review of the TCA that would infringe our legal sovereignty or involve submission to the CJEU or dynamic alignment. We will take a tough approach on ensuring that the EU are meeting their commitments under the TCA and not discriminating against our exporters. We have always been clear the NHS and the services it provides are not on the table in trade negotiations. All food and drink products imported into the UK, including those from countries we have trade agreements with, must comply with the UK’s high standards. We will
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always stand up for UK agriculture in our trade deals. The US is our single largest trading partner. We have signed the Atlantic Declaration and deals with eight US states, including Florida and Texas, with a combined GDP of £5.7 trillion. And we will look to agree a free trade agreement with the US when they are ready to do so. Using our Brexit freedoms to deliver regulatory reform Conservatives believe in reducing the burden of regulation, freeing up businesses to thrive. We want small businesses free to innovate, balanced with proportionate protections for consumers and working people. We will never introduce Labour’s package of French- style union rules, which are a threat to jobs, our competitiveness and our economy. We will go further to transform the UK regulatory landscape, making sure regulators deliver the best outcomes for business, consumers and the environment. Thanks to Brexit, we have taken back control of our laws and freed British businesses from unnecessary burdens. We legislated to remove the principle of EU law supremacy and have undertaken a root-and-branch review of the more than 6,000 laws we had inherited from the EU. We have already repealed or reformed over 2,000 EU laws and by July 2026 we will have repealed or reformed over half of the entire stock of EU law we inherited. Only the Conservatives will keep on removing EU laws from our statute book. Our Smarter Regulation approach has already saved 50 million hours of administrative time for business, saving them an estimated £1 billion. We have also used post-Brexit tax freedoms, including introducing VAT-free installations of energy-efcient materials and replacing complex EU alcohol duty rates. And to protect our pubs we will maintain our Brexit Pubs Guarantee that means the duty on drinks on draught, such as beer and cider, will be less than in supermarkets. Cutting government bureaucracy We will make government more efcient, cut waste and attract the best and the brightest, by: ❱ Returning the civil service to its pre- pandemic size to pay for our commitment to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP. ❱ Halving the amount of taxpayers’ money spent on external consultants. We will introduce controls on all ‘Equality, Diversity and Inclusion’ initiatives and spending. ❱ Bring quango spending under control. ❱ Moving 25,000 more civil servants outside of London, building on successes like the Darlington Economic Campus and hubs in Stoke-on-Trent and Wolverhampton. ❱ Opening up civil service recruitment by requiring jobs to be advertised externally to identify the best candidates. ❱ Doubling digital and AI expertise in the civil service, to take advantage of the latest technologies to transform public services. These reforms will allow us to achieve a signifcant productivity boost in Whitehall. If we returned public sector productivity to pre- pandemic levels that would deliver up to £20 billion of annual savings. The NHS Productivity Plan shows that the public sector can set out detailed plans for achieving a step-change in productivity, so we will require all Departments to deliver plans for 2% annual productivity growth at the next Spending Review. To limit the impact of industrial action on public services and balance the ability of workers to strike with the rights of the public, we will continue implementing our Minimum Service Levels legislation.
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Our plan to cut taxes and protect pensions