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Recrutiment & Employment Confederation

Other Parties Policies

Here we have short summaries of the key policies in the 2024 manifestos for the other parties likely to win seats in parliament. These are not complete manifesto summaries and focus on the key areas that are most relevant to REC members. These have been directly taken from the respective manifestos and the specific wording is not necessarily the view of the REC. 

Greens  

Jobs and Work

  • Invest £12.4 billion in skills and training, including specific funding to help workers transition into green jobs.  
  • Introduce a minimum wage of £15 an hour for all, with the costs to small businesses offset by increasing the Employment Allowance to £10,000. 
  • Deliver equal day 1 rights for all workers currently excluded from protections, including ‘gig economy’ workers and those on ‘zero hours’ contracts

Health 

  • Push for a year-on-year reduction in waiting lists, guaranteed access to an NHS dentist, rapid access to a GP and an immediate boost to NHS staff pay, including the restoration of junior doctors’ pay.  
  • Invest £20 billion to introduce free personal care, increase pay rates and introduce a career structure for carers, alongside an additional £3 billion for high-quality children’s social care. 

Education 

  • Increase school funding to £8 billion, to include £2 billion for a pay uplift for teachers. 

Welfare

  • Restore the value of disability benefits with an immediate uplift of 5% and reform eligibility tests like PIP. 

The full manifesto can be found here.

Plaid Cymru  

Economy

  • Wales should have full control of economic levers, including the powers to set income tax bands and thresholds.
  • Support reform in Wales of Non-Domestic Rates, also known as Business Rates, in order to establish a system which better supports small businesses.

Jobs and Work

  • Reverse the Tories’ anti-strike legislation
  • Support legislation to tackle insecure work, provide paid bereavement and miscarriage leave as ‘day one employment rights’, outlaw fire and re-hire tactics, abolish compulsory zero-hours contracts, establish the right to disconnect, and reform Shared Parental Leave.

Skills

  • Implement an apprenticeship living wage.

Health 

  • Restore funding for GPs at 8.7% of the Welsh health budget and recruit an additional 500 GPs across the country.  
  • Improve access and availability of degree apprenticeships in the healthcare sector.  
  • Plaid Cymru believes that shareholders should not be profiting from people’s ill health, and that profits from private agencies should be re-invested into the healthcare budget. 
  • REC is seeking further clarity from Plaid Cymru about what this would actually entail and how it would be implemented.

Education  

  • Plans for recruiting and retaining 5000 teachers and support staff.  

The full manifesto can be found here.

Reform

Economy

  • Abolish the IR35 rules.
  • Increase the VAT threshold to £150,000
  • Increase the minimum profit threshold for corporation tax to £100k to remove 1.2million SME businesses from scope.

Work and Jobs

  • Increase the income tax threshold to £20,000 to encourage people on benefits to find work.
  • All job seekers and those fit to work must find employment within 4 months or accept a job after 2 offers, failure to do so will see benefits withdrawn.
  • Introduce face to face assessments for Personal Independence Payment and Work Capability Assessments
  • Scrap thousands of laws that hold back British business and damage productivity, including employment laws.
  • No further detail is given in the manifesto on exactly what employment laws they are referring to here.

Immigration

  • Freeze non-essential immigration with exceptions only for essential skills such as health care.
  • Increased National Insurance rate of 20% for foreign workers, except those in essential services like health and care or those at businesses employing 5 workers or under.

Health and Social Care

  • All frontline NHS and social care staff to pay zero basic rate tax for 3 years to improve retention in the sector.

The full manifesto can be found here.

Scottish National Party Manifesto 

Work and Jobs 

  • Devolve employment rights to Scotland to:  

  • Create a single status of worker, except for those who are genuinely self-employed 

  • Scrap ‘exploitative’ zero hours contracts 

  • Ban ‘fire and rehire’ practices 

  • Scrap the sick pay threshold to ensure lower paid workers have access to statutory sick pay and scrap the four day waiting period to allow those who need financial support through illness to access it sooner 

  • Increase paid maternity leave to one year 

  • Take action to close the gender pay gap 

  • SNP MPs will demand the next UK Government repeal the Strikes (Minimum Services Levels) Act 

Economy and tax 

  • Devolve full tax powers, including National Insurance 

  • Support the reform of VAT to address the current imbalances between products and sectors 

  • Introduce a lower rate of VAT for hospitality and tourism sectors 

Health and Social Care 

  • Match Scotland’s NHS pay deals by increasing investment in NHS England staff pay and conditions by at least £6bn. This would deliver around £600m for Scotland in consequentials that could be invested in pay deals for NHS staff.  

  • Call for the reversal of recent moves by the the last government to stop care workers from overseas bringing their families with them to work in the UK.  

Immigration 

  • Introduce a rural visa pilot scheme to tackle labour shortages  

  • Expand shortage occupation lists to allow businesses to have access to the workforce they require