What the Liberal Democrats manifesto could mean for UK supply chains

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 third in a series being published on the Logistics Manager website throughout the week, looks into the Liberal Democrats’ manifesto for the 2024 general election.

In the foreword to the Liberal Democrats’ manifesto, its leader Ed Davey said: “This election is about more than a change of government. We must transform the very nature of British politics itself, so that we can fix the health and care crisis, get our economy back on track, end the appalling sewage scandal and give people the fair deal they deserve.”

Key policies relating to supply chain and logistics include:

Economy, security and trade

• Managing the public finances responsibly to get the national debt falling as a share of the economy and ensure that day-to-day spending does not exceed the amount raised in taxes
• Protecting the independence of the Bank of England and keeping the inflation target of 2%
• Ensuring that all fiscal events are accompanied by independent forecasts from
  the Office for Budget Responsibility
• Expanding the British Business Bank to perform a more central role in the economy, to ‘ensure that viable small and medium-sized businesses have access to capital and enable it to help crowd-in private investment, in particular in zero-carbon products and technologies’
• Developing an industrial strategy that ‘will give businesses certainty and incentivise them to invest in new technologies to grow the economy, create good jobs and tackle the climate crisis’
• Unlocking British businesses’ global potential by ‘bringing down trade barriers and building stronger future relationships with our closest trading partners’
• Repairing the ‘broken relationship with Europe, which acts as a brake on the economy and costs the UK investment, jobs and tax revenue’
• Introducing a general duty of care for the environment and human rights in business operations and supply chains
• Negotiating the UK’s participation in the Trade and Technology Council with the US and the EU to allow the UK to ‘play a leading role in global AI regulation and work with international partners in agreeing common standards for AI risk and impact assessment, testing, monitoring and auditing
• Ensuring parliament is ‘properly consulted on and signs off on negotiating mandates and any completed international trade agreements’
• Placing human rights, labour and environmental standards and protection at the heart of international trade deals
• Tackle long-standing problems in defence procurement, including by ensuring that procurement is part of a comprehensive industrial strategy to secure a reliable long-term pipeline of equipment procurements

Transport and infrastructure

• Investing in green infrastructure, innovation and skills to ‘boost economic growth and create good jobs and prosperity in every nation and region of the UK, while tackling the climate crisis
• Continuing to champion investment in the Northern Powerhouse, Western Gateway and Midlands Engine
• Supporting local and regional economic partnerships to coordinate development projects and boost growth in their areas
• Working with the devolved administrations to develop joint policies and partnerships to boost growth across the whole UK
• Ensuring that gigabit broadband is available to every home and business, including in rural and remote communities
• Continuing to participate in Horizon Europe and joining the European Innovation Council
• Aiming for at least 3% of GDP to be invested in research and development by 2030, rising to 3.5% by 2034
• Tackling the productivity crisis by encouraging businesses to invest in training, take up digital technologies and become more energy efficient, including through industrial strategy and reform of business rates
• Creating a ‘clear, workable and well-resourced cross-sectoral regulatory framework for artificial intelligence that: promotes innovation while creating certainty for AI users, developers and investors; establishes transparency and accountability for AI systems in the public sector; and ensures the use of personal data and AI is unbiased, transparent and accurate, and respects the privacy of innocent people’
• Introducing a holistic and comprehensive National Food Strategy to ‘ensure food security, tackle rising food prices, end food poverty and improve health and nutrition’
• Accelerating the roll-out of the new Environmental Land Management schemes, properly funding it with an extra £1 billion a year to ‘support profitable, sustainable and nature-friendly farming’
• Making it cheaper and easier for drivers to switch to electric vehicles by rapidly rolling out far more charging points, reintroducing the plug-in car grant and restoring the requirement that every new car and small van sold from 2030 is zero-emission
• Giving more of the roads budget to local councils to maintain existing roads, pavements and cycleways including repairing potholes
• Investing in research and development to make the UK the world leader in zero-carbon flight and take steps to reduce demand for flying
• Supporting new charging points with an upgraded National Grid and a step-change in local grid capacity
• Cutting VAT on public charging to 5%

Skills and employment

• Launching an ‘ambitious industrial strategy to incentivise businesses to invest and create good jobs across the UK’
• Fixing the skills and recruitment crisis by investing in education and training, including increasing the availability of apprenticeships and career advice for young people
• Encouraging employers to promote employee ownership by giving staff in listed companies with more than 250 employees a right to request shares, to be ‘held in trust for the benefit of employees’
• Replacing the apprenticeship levy with a ‘broader and more flexible skills and training levy’
• Boosting the take-up of apprenticeships, including by guaranteeing they are paid at least the National Minimum Wage by scrapping the lower apprentice rate
• Creating new Lifelong Skills Grants, giving all adults £5,000 to spend on education and training throughout their lives, aiming to increase them to £10,000 in the future ‘when the public finances allow’
• Developing National Colleges as national centres of expertise for key sectors, such as renewable energy, to ‘deliver the high-level vocational skills that businesses need’
• Identifying and seeking to solve skills gaps, such as the lack of advanced technicians, by expanding higher vocational training like foundation degrees, Higher National Diplomas, Higher National Certificates and Higher Apprenticeships
• Improving the quality of vocational education and strengthening careers advice and links with employers in schools and colleges
• Fixing the work visa system and expanding the Youth Mobility Scheme to address labour shortages
• Establishing an independent review to recommend a genuine living wage across all sectors, with government departments and all other public sector employers taking a leading role in paying it
• Setting a 20% higher minimum wage for people on zero-hour contracts at times of normal demand to compensate them for the uncertainty of fluctuating hours of work
• Giving a right to request a fixed-hours contract after 12 months for ‘zero hours’ and agency workers, not to be unreasonably refused
• Setting out a clear and stable roadmap to net zero
• Implementing the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism for high-emission products, ‘protecting UK businesses from unfair competition’
• Reducing emissions from industrial processes by supporting carbon capture and storage and new low-carbon processes for cement and steel production
• Introducing a holistic and comprehensive National Food Strategy to ensure food security, tackle rising food prices, end food poverty and improve health and nutrition

Energy

• Investing in renewable power so that 90% of the UK’s electricity is generated from renewables by 2030
• Appointing a Chief Secretary for Sustainability in the Treasury to ‘ensure that the economy is sustainable, resource-efficient and zero-carbon’
• Establishing a new Net Zero Delivery Authority to coordinate action across government departments and work with devolved administrations
• Establish national and local citizens’ assemblies to ‘give people real involvement in the decisions needed to tackle climate change’
• Removing restrictions on new solar and wind power, and supporting investment and innovation in tidal and wave power in particular
• Maintaining the ban on fracking and introducing a ban on new coal mines
• Working with other European countries to to build a sustainable supply chain for renewable energy technology

Read the other stories in this series on the Logistics Manager website:

• What the Conservative Party manifesto could mean for UK supply chains
• What the Labour Party manifesto could mean for UK supply chains