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Joint Public Issues Team

Churches working for peace and justice

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Suggestions for General Election manifestos

You are here: Home / Suggestions for General Election manifestos
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A society where the poorest and most marginalised are at the centre

We want parties to commit to providing a better, more holistic benefits system, and more financial support for providing community.

  • Ensure that the benefits system protects against destitution by implementing an ‘essentials guarantee’ that prevents incomes falling below the level required to meet basic needs. 
  • Re-establish the link between the support of the benefits system and the needs of each family by abolishing the two-child rule, the household benefit cap and the housing benefit cap. 
  • Provide additional grants and flexible fundraising powers which enable local authorities to provide community spaces and services that offer greater community for low-income families.

A just economy that enables the flourishing of all life

We want parties to commit to an economy that fairly distributes wealth and focuses on the wellbeing of its citizens and nature, rather than just growth.

  • Review the tax system, ensuring that tax is levied in the jurisdiction where the value is created, and at an effective rate that means those with the most proportionately pay the most.
  • Commit to developing economic metrics and pro wellbeing policy that encompass the environmental and social impacts of policy beyond GDP growth.
  • Create an industrial strategy to decarbonise the UK economy through structural change by using public sector investment, the tax system and regulation to prevent polluting technologies.

A society that welcomes the stranger

We want parties to commit to changing the UK’s approach to asylum, so that asylum seekers are welcomed and better supported.

  • Immediate withdrawal from the Rwanda Scheme to ensure no one seeking asylum is forcibly sent to a third country before their claim is fairly assessed in the UK.
  • Allow asylum seekers the right to work if their asylum claim takes over 6 months to be processed. Ensure adequate housing and financial support to those unable to work or find work.
  • Expand resettlement programmes, including more family reunion routes and a specific route for unaccompanied children, to prevent asylum seekers needing to use dangerous routes.

A planet where our environment is renewed

We want parties to commit to taking concrete steps to reach net zero emissions and respond to the climate crisis in the UK and globally.

  • Ensure all new build houses are built to net-zero standards by 2028, and fund the retrofitting of all public sector housing to increase energy efficiency.
  • Decarbonise the UK’s electricity generation by 2035, ensuring at least 90% comes from renewable sources.
  • Support the implementation of a climate-related loss and damage facility, with a commitment to UK financial support and proposals for international financing mechanisms.

A politics characterised by listening, kindness and truthfulness

We want parties to commit to greater accountability for those in public office, and to put lived experience at the centre of government decisions.

  • Legally require an independent ethics advisor for both the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition, who will publish an annual report on their  honesty and accountability.
  • Listen to lived experience of poverty using an advisory committee for welfare poverty, ensuring legislation and government spending reflects actual need.  
  • Produce clear best practice for kind, positive engagement between MPs, and constituents, with an independent grievance service for the occasions when people feel their MP isn’t doing so.

A world that actively works for peace

We want parties to commit to taking disarmament and peace more seriously, and to work harder to tackle global inequality.

  • Actively support the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, alongside a commitment to a UN General Assembly Special Session on Disarmament.
  • Raise the aid budget to at least 0.7% of Gross National Income, to comply with UN targets and restore a leadership position for the UK in tackling rising global inequality.
  • Increase our focus on conflict prevention by at least quadrupling the contribution to the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund, reversing the recent downward trend.

Please note that some of these points are devolved issues and so may not be applicable to party manifestos outside of Westminster.

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