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Welsh Election Party Manifesto Briefings

Posted on in Business News , Cycles News , Political News

The mWalesain Welsh political parties have published their manifestos ahead of parliamentary elections on 6th May

Below is a summary of what each party's manifesto will mean for small shops.

Labour Party 

ENVIRONMENT

  • Legislate to abolish the use of more commonly littered single-use plastics.
  • Introduce an extended producer responsibility scheme to incentivise waste reduction by businesses.
  • Fund additional flood protection for more than 45,000 homes.

JOBS AND SKILLS

  • Put into law our successful social partnership approach with employers and unions to improve workers' rights and drive up the quality of jobs.
  • Build on our Better Jobs Closer to Home programme and our foundational economy work to grow local economies.
  • Use our £500m Wales Flexible Investment Fund to support economic recovery and expand the Development Bank of Wales' patient capital funds to provide long-term lending to small and medium sized enterprises.
  • Create 125,000 all-age apprenticeships during the next Senedd term. We will work with unions and employers to expand the use of shared apprenticeships to give people more flexible routes into training.

TOWN CENTRES

  • To enable our town centres to become more agile economically, we will help businesses to increase their digital offer and support local supply chains and delivery services.
  • With local partners, we will develop masterplans for towns and high streets to coordinate and focus economic opportunities and services, so more people work and spend time in these vibrant centres.
  • Support the development of a register of empty buildings and help small businesses move into vacant shops.
  • Empower communities to have a greater stake in local regeneration.

EQUALITIES

  • Work with partners to establish an equalities legal service to provide support on unfair or discriminatory employment practices.
  • Explore legislation to address pay gaps based on gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, disability and other forms of discrimination.
  • Create a Race Disparity Unit alongside an Equality Data Unit to ensure an inclusive evidence base to inform decision making in government.

CULTURE & COMMUNITIES

  • Consult on legislation permitting local authorities to raise a tourism levy, ring fenced to support improving the visitor experience in Wales.
  • Develop community recycling facilities in town centres and promote repair and re-use facilities to encourage zero-waste shopping.
  • Strengthen the autonomy and effectiveness of local government to make them more successful in delivering services.

OUR NATION

  • Pursue the case for the devolution of policing and justice.
  • Campaign for the under-funded Health and Safety Executive to be devolved to Wales and we will manage it properly.
  • Establish an independent commission to consider the constitutional future of Wales.
 

Welsh Conservative and Unionist Party 

COVID-19

  • Maintain and enhance the programme of asymptomatic testing for Covid-19 in businesses with more than 10 employees.
  • Urgently review and start funding businesses immediately based on need, ending the first come first served nature of current Welsh Government support for Welsh jobs.
  • Enhance Test, Track and Protect with funding to meet demand to clamp down on any outbreak, avoiding any more national lockdowns.
  • Appoint a dedicated Covid-19 Recovery Minister in the Welsh Government to oversee all areas of coronavirus recovery.

SECURING JOBS AND LIVELIHOODS

  • Abolish business rates for small businesses and reform the outdated tax on growth.
  • Ensure no new taxes for the duration of the next Senedd term.
  • Introduce a Covid bounce back package, which includes the establishment of a £2.5 billion Rebuild Wales Investment Fund and maintain the cut in VAT to 5% for tourism businesses until April 2022.
  • Support new micro businesses with our "Jump Start Scheme" paying the employer National Insurance contributions of two new employees for two years to accelerate growth.
  • Establish "Innovate Wales", based in North Wales, a one stop shop for firms to support new enterprises, and encourage existing businesses to grow.
  • Create Business Rate Free Zones providing a three-year business rate holiday for SMEs as part of our Covid Community Recovery Fund.

BUILDING BACK GREENER

  • Deliver a deposit return scheme for bottles and cans to promote recycling and minimise waste.
  • Ban single-use plastics for nonmedical use such as plastic wet wipes, straws, stirrers, disposable cups and cotton buds.
  • Create a National Flood Agency to coordinate flood risk management. 
 

Plaid Cymru 

SPREADING PROSPERITY

  • Establish new sector-based social partnership bodies with an initial focus on low-pay sectors. These advisory bodies will set minimum standards for pay and targets for wage growth.
  • Encourage employers to adopt modern working practices.
  • Establish Prosperity Wales, an arms-length development agency to provide effective policy delivery, focusing on place-based development and the foundational economy, including management training for SME staff.
  • Establish a SME Investment Strategy including long term loans at zero interest with long repayment holidays, restart loans, repayment and recovery loans and new deals for early stage and growth companies.
  • Invest in a new Community Bank to help small business and bring back local banking services.
  • Launch buy Welsh and buy local campaigns to raise levels of Welsh consumption of Welsh produced goods and services.
  • Develop public distribution systems so small and medium-sized businesses no longer find themselves blocked from market access and can sell directly to consumers.

TACKLING THE CLIMATE EMERGENCY

  • Create a Deposit Return Scheme for bottles and cans.
  • Introduce a levy on all single-use cups filled at the point of sale, payable by the consumer, in order to encourage the uptake of reusable alternatives.
  • Ban non-essential single-use plastics in 2021.
  • We will introduce binding targets to halve food waste from farm to fork by 2030.
  • Legislate to ban sales of new petrol and diesel cars and vans in 2027, before the UK date of 2030.
  • Set a Wales 2035 Mission to decarbonise and to reach net zero emissions.
  • Increase the level of investment in flood mitigation to £500m over the course of this Senedd term.
 

RURAL WALES

  • Provide start-up funds for creating publicly or cooperatively owned shops specialising in domestically produced products to give people access to high-quality food.
  • Create an online sales platform for Welsh food for domestic consumption. 
  • Introducing targeted reductions in business rates to help the tourism sector through the recovery and lobby the UK Government to reduce VAT for tourism businesses.
  • Establish a consultative Rural Senedd to strengthen the voice of rural communities. 

TOWN CENTRES

  • Assist business to move from the periphery to create viable and lively centres.
  • Make management of town centres with 30 or more commercial premises a statutory responsibility of local councils.
  • Introduce a new category (Grade III) of listed buildings - Buildings of local importance - that will need planning permission before being significantly altered or demolished.
  • Where appropriate make the upper floors of town centre premises rate-free and revise planning guidance for such premises to facilitate their conversion to other uses.
  • Where appropriate make town centres with very high vacancy rates (20 per cent plus), rate-free Enterprise Zones with a package of other aid and advice provided by Prosperity Wales, our new enterprise agency.

OTHER

  • Examine the case for a Junk Food Tax.
  • We will review the tax levers we have available to examine how they could better unlock skills investment from business.
  • Press for full devolution of the criminal justice system.
  • Deliver ultra-fast gigabit broadband to all Welsh businesses by 2026.
  • Hold an independence referendum during our first term in government.
  • We will adopt a model of longer apprenticeships with more off the job training. 
 

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