SAFETY AND SECURITY

Stability in our lives comes from a reliable income, safe home and secure nation. Here’s how we can ensure all this and more.

Housing

Encourage house building and a more stable housing sector by:

Establishing a government owned ‘Crown Corporation’ (similar to those used in Canada) tasked with developing and delivering housing
Increasing investment in communities near proposed developments where there have been significant increases in housing density
Reviewing legislation to enable government or industrial sites to be developed into housing for key workers
Reviewing long-term tenancy and leasehold legislation, so that people have power over their homes and better defence against exploitative tenancy agreements and rogue managing agents

Improve planning powers for local authorities by:

Reviewing practices in Local Planning Authorities (LPAs)
Enabling higher Council Tax on properties left empty for prolonged periods
Providing local authorities with greater autonomy to borrow money to build
Clamping down on the abuse of the Viability Assessment mechanism by developers when building social and affordable housing
Investigating ways of allowing local people to invest in local building projects for low risk, steady returns
Supporting local action to encourage civic renewal in our high streets and restore pride in our cities, towns and villages

Ensure a proper regulatory response to developments in the modern job market by:

Addressing the power imbalance of exclusive ‘zero hours’ contracts
Incentivising business to provide, support and encourage employee wellness schemes
Better enforcing the National Minimum Wage in order to prevent undercutting of UK wages
Tightening-up rules on ‘self-employment’ status to prevent abuse and the undermining of employee’s rights.
Challenging the way unemployment statistics are recorded and reported by government so they better reflect the impact of self-employment and ‘platform economy’ jobs on headline figures)

Increasing funding to the police to reverse the decline in police numbers, prioritising the presence of police on the streets whilst supporting innovative technology to fight crime
Bringing together multi-agency teams so their collective expertise can be brought to bear on the upstream drivers of violent crime in urban centres
Investing in communities most affected by violent and gang crime in order to provide opportunities for those young people most at risk
Working to maintain existing standards in relationships with security forces across the EU to better promote a unified and cooperative approach to law and order

Taking steps to legalise cannabis use, removing it from the black market and reducing the power of drugs gangs, potentially raising significant funds to invest in public services hollowed out by austerity
Reviewing sentencing guidelines in order to prioritise schemes that benefit communities for certain non-violent crimes
Reorganising arrangements for the sentencing and rehabilitation of offenders so they are focussed much more tightly on ensuring prior offenders have no incentive to return to crime
Reviewing existing legislation to increase efficiency and reduce unplanned and unstructured extension of legislation beyond the purpose for which it was originally intended

Rebalancing our service-based economy through ‘new industrialisation’, creating new innovative industries that will rejuvenate towns and cities
Investing in infrastructure around the country, away from London and the south east
Prioritising reforms that increase GDP in the immediate term without requiring government funding, such as greater access to skilled labour

Aiming to ensure our public finances over the medium to long term are within a debt to GDP ratio of 60% (currently around 85%) and annual deficits up to 3% of GDP (currently approx 2.5%)
Creating opportunity for additional spending by maintaining the deficit at 1-2% of GDP rather than running a surplus

Developing easy to use digital platforms to reduce the administrative burden for everyone calculating and paying taxes, both individuals and corporations
Looking to reduce the tax code, making it simpler and more streamlined
Prioritising low taxes for small business owners, recognising the importance of enterprise in delivering innovation and economic growth
Reviewing the effectiveness of tax evasion laws, both monetary and non monetary, focussing on what works internationally and tackling cross-border avoidance and evasion.

Entering into agreements with international partners to tax large technology companies (Apple, Google, Amazon etc.) more effectively, so they make a fair contribution to the country’s infrastructure
Regularly informing the public about the level of evasion, breaking it down by sector, and showing the consequences for public services

Investing in capabilities designed to counter the threat posed by hybrid warfare, which requires innovative, agile solutions and a fundamental rethink of national security institutions
Re-examining the advantages and disadvantages of existing and planned military capabilities, setting out a roadmap to ensure our defence forces are modern, credible, robust, and ready
Supporting both the Modernising Defence Programme, which has had unfortunate delays, and our nuclear programme as part of a package for protecting our national security
Revisiting inefficient procurement processes and the poor management of major projects