Ahead of the general election on 4 July, political parties in the UK have begun to roll out their manifestos so Logistics Manager is breaking down each party’s policies on a range of factors that could impact supply chains, including the economy, security, skills, employment, transport, infrastructure and trade.
This, the first in a series to be published on the Logistics Manager website throughout the week, looks into the Conservative Party’s manifesto for the 2024 general election.
Conservative leader and current prime minister Rishi Sunak said in the foreword to the party’s manifesto: “We are restoring our economic stability after Covid and Ukraine. Inflation is down, real wages are up, growth has returned – and we are cutting taxes to give working people financial security.”
He continued: “In the next decade, we’ll face challenges to our energy and national security from foreign conflicts; 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.”
Key policies relating to supply chain and logistics include:
Economy, security and trade
- Completing free trade agreements with India and with the Gulf Cooperation Council and continuing to pursue free trade agreements with countries such as Israel and Switzerland
- Agreeing a free trade agreement with the US ‘when they are ready to do so’
- Delivering a National Defence and Resilience Plan
- Delivering an Integrated Procurement Model to ‘make defence procurement faster, smarter and more joined-up, boost private sector investment and transform innovation’
- Introducing a legally binding target to enhance food security
- Improving public sector procurement to work towards a goal of at least 50% of food expenditure being spent on ‘food produced locally or to higher environmental production standards’
Transport and infrastructure
- Investing £36 billion in local roads, rail and buses to drive regional growth, including £8.3bn to fill potholes and resurface roads, funded by cancelling the second phase of HS2
- Stopping road pricing, reversing the ULEZ expansion and applying local referendums to new 20mph zones and low traffic neighbourhoods
- Extending the full expensing policy to leasing ‘once the fiscal conditions allow’
- Investing £4.7bn for smaller cities, towns and rural areas in the North and Midlands to spend on transport priorities
- Boosting rail connectivity in the North and Midlands through plans to fund Northern Powerhouse Rail and the Midlands Rail Hub
- Ensuring a nationwide EV charging infrastructure, including rapid charging and delivering the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate
- Supporting British sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) production through the SAF mandate
- Supporting the decarbonisation of shipping and ports by establishing a review to explore all options to provide more choice and drive down fares
- Speeding up the average time it takes to sign off major infrastructure projects ‘from four years to one’ by taking action such as introducing reforms to ‘outdated EU red tape’, ensuring any requirements to offset the impact of new infrastructure are proportionate and ensuring National Policy Statements are regularly updated
- Increasing public spending on research and development by £2bn per year
- Maintaining research and development tax reliefs
- Creating more freeports and Business Rates Retention Zones
- Allowing ‘every part of England that wants one’ to have a devolution deal by 2030
- Providing 105 towns in the UK with a £20 million endowment fund
Skills and employment
- Funding 100,000 ‘high-quality’ apprenticeships for young people, paid for by curbing the number of underperforming university degrees
- Creating 100,000 more apprenticeships in England every year by the end of the next parliament
- Delivering the Lifelong Learning Entitlement to support adults to ‘train, retrain and upskill flexibly throughout their working lives’
- Cutting tax for workers by taking another 2p off employee National Insurance
- Maintaining the National Living Wage in each year of the next parliament at two-thirds of median earnings
Energy
- Developing new gas power stations to ‘maintain a safe and reliable energy source for days when the weather doesn’t power up renewables’
- Trebling the nation’s offshore wind capacity and building the first two carbon capture and storage clusters
- Investing £1.1bn into the Green Industries Growth Accelerator to ‘support British manufacturing capabilities, boost supply chains and ensure our energy transition is made in Britain’
- Approving two new fleets of Small Modular Reactors to ‘rapidly expand nuclear power, create well-paid, high-skilled jobs and deliver cheaper, cleaner and more secure energy’
- Halving the time it takes for new nuclear reactors to be approved by allowing regulators to assess projects while designs are being finalised
- Delivering a new gigawatt power plant at Wylfa in North Wales and working with industry to deliver existing projects at Hinkley Point and Sizewell
- Providing a bonus, on top of contract payments that support offshore wind, to reward energy firms that invest in manufacturing in the most disadvantaged places in the UK or invest in more sustainable supply chains
- Implementing a new import carbon pricing mechanism by 2027 to ‘ensure that imports of iron, steel, aluminium, ceramics and cement from countries with a lower or no carbon price will face a comparable carbon price to those goods produced in the UK’
Read the other stories in this series on the Logistics Manager website:
- What the Labour Party manifesto could mean for UK supply chains
- What the Liberal Democrats manifesto could mean for UK supply chains
