Manifesto analysis

All the major parties in England and Wales have now published their manifestos ahead of the general election on 4 July. Manifestos present a catalogue of ideas and policies the parties would like to enact if they were to get into government, and are used to persuade the electorate to vote for them.

It is also the case that just because something doesn’t appear in the manifesto, doesn’t mean once in government, the new cabinet won’t do it; it is more about setting the tone and the big picture regarding their intentions.

The CLA public affairs team has been analysing all of the manifestos and what they could mean for members and rural businesses.

The launch of the Conservative campaign may have been a bit rocky. However, its manifesto contains many policies that could appeal to rural businesses.

• Increase the UK-wide farming budget by £1bn over the Parliament, ensuring it rises by inflation in every year. Farmers will be able to spend every extra penny on grants to boost domestic food production.
• Maintain the current approach to Environmental Land Management schemes (ELMs).
• Introduce a legally binding target to enhance the UK’s food security.

• Fast track permissions for the building of infrastructure on farms, such as glasshouses, slurry and grain stores and small-scale reservoirs.
• End no fault evictions following court reforms and while strengthening of other grounds for landlords to evict private tenants guilty of anti-social behaviour.
• Protect the green belt from uncontrolled development.

• Maintain spending on flood defences.
• Deliver tree planting and peatland commitments via Nature for Climate funding.
• Reject universal right to roam, but look to work with landowners to open more ‘access to nature’ routes.

• Invest in new technology to achieve broadband targets in rural areas.
• Retain tax incentives including agricultural property relief and business property relief.
• Improve enforcement of the Prompt Payment Code.

Labour has ditched the traditional style of a manifesto for this election, and has instead chosen to focus on “missions”, which are more streamlined areas of interest for policy development.

• Will make ELMs work for farmers and nature.
• Set a target for half of all food purchased across the public sector to be locally produced or certified to higher environmental standards.
• Introduce a land use framework.

• Immediately abolish Section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions.
• Set out new national policy statements, slash red tape, and build support for developments by ensuring communities directly benefit.
• Release of lower quality ‘grey belt’ land will be prioritised and introduce ‘golden rules’ to ensure development benefits communities and nature.
• Ensure homes in the private rented sector meet minimum energy efficiency standards by 2030.

• Create nine new National River Walks.
• Establish three new National Forests in England.
• Plant millions of trees and create new woodlands.

• Publish a roadmap for business taxation for the next Parliament, which will allow businesses to plan investments with confidence.
• Make a renewed push to fulfil the ambition of full gigabit and national 5G coverage by 2030.
• Implement employment rights legislation within 100 days. This will include ending zero-hour contracts and fire and rehire, while removing age bands for the minimum wage.

Ed Davy has certainly been having fun during the campaign, but the Lib Dem manifesto sets out serious ideas.

• Provide an extra £1bn to the agricultural budget over the course of the Parliament.
• Introduce of a range of other “public money for public goods” programmes for farmers who opt in to ELMs
• Strengthen the role of the Grocery Code Adjudicator.

• Build 380,000 homes a year and allow councils to buy land for housing based on current value rather than hope value.
• Encourage the use of rural exception sites.
• Reintroduce requirements for landlords to upgrade the energy efficiency of their properties to EPC C or above by 2028.

• Ensure that nature-based solutions, including tree planting form a critical part of the UK’s strategy to tackle climate change.
• Double the abundance of species and double woodland cover by 2050.
• Transform water companies into public benefit companies and ban bonuses for water bosses until discharges and leaks end.

• Ensure that gigabit broadband is available to every home and business.
• Create a new cross-government minister for communities and a new minister for tourism and hospitality.
• Plan to remove restrictions on new solar and wind power; develop grid infrastructure.

Unsurprisingly, Plaid’s manifesto focuses a lot on calls for Welsh independence. Nevertheless, it contains various pledges of interest for the rural economy.

• Continue to call for the Welsh Sustainable Farming Scheme to move to a funding model that recognises the social value the agricultural sector contributes.
• Integrate a novel approach to water quality regulations, utilising updated technical innovations rather than a farming-by-calendar approach.
• Support steps to strengthen the UK’s disease surveillance networks, including protecting the UK’s scanning surveillance budget.

• Fund packages to assist local government to enforce planning decisions to ensure that developers stick to agreements.
• Ensure local development plans are not imposed upon local planning authorities.
• Support removing the tax on renewable liquid fuels, to make them more affordable for rural households.

• Provide stronger enforcement for the protection of Sites of Special Scientific Interest.
• Support the introduction of biodiversity targets, to halt biodiversity decline by 2030, and ensure substantive recovery by 2050.
• Insist on alternative methods to avoid the un-necessary destruction of the countryside for large industrial scale solar farms and pylons.

• Support the reform of business rates in Wales.
• Release more Project Gigabit money to increase rural connectivity, increasing the investment to tackle the “very hard to reach areas” or the “total not-spots”.
• Reconfigure the Rural Fuel Duty Relief Scheme and support it being doubled to 10p per litre.

Reform UK took the unique approach of publishing a ‘working draft’ of its offering with requests for comments, queries and questions. Its manifesto does; however, set out key indicators of the party’s position on areas of interest.

• Increase the farming budget to £3bn
• Replace current climate-related farming subsidies with direct payments
• Target 70% of food consumed in the UK to be produced in the country, with this target rising to 75% for taxpayer-funded bodies

• Scrap the 2019 tax relief changes for landlords
• Abandon the Renters Reform Bill, instead boosting monitoring, appeals and enforcement processes
• Fast track planning and tax incentives for the development of brownfield sites

• Build new reservoirs in high rainfall areas
• Grant shale gas licences on test sites for two years - enable major production when safety is proven, with local compensation schemes
• Launch a new model that brings 50% of each utility company into public ownership. The other 50% would be owned by UK pension fund

• Abolish inheritance tax for all estates worth less than £2m
• Reduce the main corporation tax rate to 20%
• Lift the VAT threshold to £120,000