Recent policy announcements for Local Elections 2023

Launching Labour’s local election campaign, Keir Starmer revealed that a Labour government would use the revenue from a proper windfall tax on oil and gas giants to freeze council tax for a year.

Alongside Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, Keir Starmer set out further details of Labour’s five national missions for a better Britain. He explained how Labour will make Britain’s streets safe, halving serious violent crime and raising confidence in the police and criminal justice system to its highest levels.

Shadow cabinet ministers Steve Reed and Emily Thornberry added to Labour’s crime and justice policies, pledging to introduce clean-up squads for fly tippers and crack down on overseas scam calls with tough new rules.

By preventing and tackling crime, Labour will restore people’s confidence that if they are a victim of crime, the police will investigate it, the criminals will be caught, and the consequences will be real. Doing this will mean people are more economically engaged, happier, healthier, and more able to participate in a thriving society.

Shadow Environment Secretary Jim McMahon also published the Water Quality (Sewage Discharge) Bill to end the Tory sewage scandal. The plan legally underpin four crucial reduction measures: the monitoring of all sewage outlets; automatic fines for sewage dumping; a legally binding target to reduce sewage dumping events; and a guaranteed strategy for the reduction of sewage discharges.

These are early outcomes of Labour’s policy review process for 2023 that is nearly complete. The process saw 365 members attend six online events with the shadow cabinet, and 2,000 written submissions were received from across the labour movement and an additional 1,300 contributions from third parties such as think tanks, charities, businesses and the third sector. The outcomes will be finalised at a national meeting towards the end of July.

Labour’s Vision

We have a plan for a fairer economy, and the policies to make it happen. These can be broken down into different categories: Fairer Taxation, Sustainability, Democratising Services, Reducing the Deficit, Worker’s Rights and Investment

Worker’s Rights

Introduce a £10 per Real Living Wage
An end to zero hours contracts.
Reverse anti-trade union laws.
Employee/Inclusive Ownership Funds: Transfer 10% of equity in all British firms with over 250 employees into worker owned and controlled funds over the next ten years.
“Right to own” – give workers a right of first refusal when privately listed companies are being floated, sold, or closed.

Investment

A National Investment Bank to provide infrastructure for long term funding for SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises).
A £250 billion ‘National Transformation Fund’ to create new high skill high pay jobs across the country, in key sectors of the future – Housing, Technology, Renewable Energy and Infrastructure.

Fairer Taxation

Place the tax burden on those who can afford, not on those who can’t.
Clamping down to on Tax Avoidance, raising up to £6.8 billion.
Increased tax for the top 5% of earners with a 50% rate on income over £123,000.
Increase in Corporation Tax in annual increments up to 26%.

Public Ownership

Labour will bring the railways and key utilities like energy and water back into public ownership.
Labour will amend company law so that directors owe a duty directly not only to shareholders, but to employees, customers, the environment and the wider public.
Labour plans involve not only bring these industries back into public ownership but will also work to ‘democratise’ the running of public industries giving employees a ‘right to own.’
Workers can democratically play a part in the decisions regarding the running of the companies they work in, instead of these decisions being made by private elites.

Sustainable Growth

The climate crisis is one of the biggest issues facing the planet as whole. We need to build an economy that protects the planet.
Develop a clean energy plan with 60% of power and heat from sustainable sources by 2030.
Cut CO2 emissions by 45% by 2030.
Create over 400,000 skilled new jobs in the sustainable energy industry.
Ensure a fairer system of energy prices for homeowners, regaining control of an overpriced, inefficient and polluted system of energy supply.