Welsh Election Party Manifesto Briefings

EQUALITIES

• Work with partners to establish an equalities legal service to provide support on unfair or discriminatory employment practices.
• Explore legislation to address pay gaps based on gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, disability and other forms of discrimination.
• Create a Race Disparity Unit alongside an Equality Data Unit to ensure an inclusive evidence base to inform decision making in government.
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CULTURE & COMMUNITIES

• Consult on legislation permitting local authorities to raise a tourism levy, ring fenced to support improving the visitor experience in Wales.
• Develop community recycling facilities in town centres and promote repair and re-use facilities to encourage zero-waste shopping.
• Strengthen the autonomy and effectiveness of local government to make them more successful in delivering services.

OUR NATION

• Pursue the case for the devolution of policing and justice.
• Campaign for the under-funded Health and Safety Executive to be devolved to Wales and we will manage it properly.
• Establish an independent commission to consider the constitutional future of Wales.
  

Welsh Conservative and Unionist Party 

COVID-19

• Maintain and enhance the programme of asymptomatic testing for Covid-19 in businesses with more than 10 employees.
• Urgently review and start funding businesses immediately based on need, ending the first come first served nature of current Welsh Government support for Welsh jobs.
• Enhance Test, Track and Protect with funding to meet demand to clamp down on any outbreak, avoiding any more national lockdowns.
• Appoint a dedicated Covid-19 Recovery Minister in the Welsh Government to oversee all areas of coronavirus recovery.
  

SECURING JOBS AND LIVELIHOODS

• Abolish business rates for small businesses and reform the outdated tax on growth.
• Ensure no new taxes for the duration of the next Senedd term.
• Introduce a Covid bounce back package, which includes the establishment of a £2.5 billion Rebuild Wales Investment Fund and maintain the cut in VAT to 5% for tourism businesses until April 2022.
• Support new micro businesses with our "Jump Start Scheme" paying the employer National Insurance contributions of two new employees for two years to accelerate growth.
• Establish "Innovate Wales", based in North Wales, a one stop shop for firms to support new enterprises, and encourage existing businesses to grow.
• Create Business Rate Free Zones providing a three-year business rate holiday for SMEs as part of our Covid Community Recovery Fund.
  

BUILDING BACK GREENER

• Deliver a deposit return scheme for bottles and cans to promote recycling and minimise waste.
• Ban single-use plastics for nonmedical use such as plastic wet wipes, straws, stirrers, disposable cups and cotton buds.
• Create a National Flood Agency to coordinate flood risk management. 

Plaid Cymru 

SPREADING PROSPERITY

• Establish new sector-based social partnership bodies with an initial focus on low-pay sectors. These advisory bodies will set minimum standards for pay and targets for wage growth.
• Encourage employers to adopt modern working practices.
• Establish Prosperity Wales, an arms-length development agency to provide effective policy delivery, focusing on place-based development and the foundational economy, including management training for SME staff.
• Establish a SME Investment Strategy including long term loans at zero interest with long repayment holidays, restart loans, repayment and recovery loans and new deals for early stage and growth companies.
• Invest in a new Community Bank to help small business and bring back local banking services.
• Launch buy Welsh and buy local campaigns to raise levels of Welsh consumption of Welsh produced goods and services.
• Develop public distribution systems so small and medium-sized businesses no longer find themselves blocked from market access and can sell directly to consumers.
  

TACKLING THE CLIMATE EMERGENCY

• Create a Deposit Return Scheme for bottles and cans.
• Introduce a levy on all single-use cups filled at the point of sale, payable by the consumer, in order to encourage the uptake of reusable alternatives.
• Ban non-essential single-use plastics in 2021.
• We will introduce binding targets to halve food waste from farm to fork by 2030.
• Legislate to ban sales of new petrol and diesel cars and vans in 2027, before the UK date of 2030.
• Set a Wales 2035 Mission to decarbonise and to reach net zero emissions.
• Increase the level of investment in flood mitigation to £500m over the course of this Senedd term.

RURAL WALES

TOWN CENTRES

• Assist business to move from the periphery to create viable and lively centres.
• Make management of town centres with 30 or more commercial premises a statutory responsibility of local councils.
• Introduce a new category (Grade III) of listed buildings - Buildings of local importance - that will need planning permission before being significantly altered or demolished.
• Where appropriate make the upper floors of town centre premises rate-free and revise planning guidance for such premises to facilitate their conversion to other uses.
• Where appropriate make town centres with very high vacancy rates (20 per cent plus), rate-free Enterprise Zones with a package of other aid and advice provided by Prosperity Wales, our new enterprise agency.
  

OTHER

• Examine the case for a Junk Food Tax.
• We will review the tax levers we have available to examine how they could better unlock skills investment from business.
• Press for full devolution of the criminal justice system.
• Deliver ultra-fast gigabit broadband to all Welsh businesses by 2026.
• Hold an independence referendum during our first term in government.
• We will adopt a model of longer apprenticeships with more off the job training.