Our policies, in the open

Everyone wants lower tax. To get there we first have to raise efficiency, so in the near term we’d hold rates steady with a clear ten‑year goal of lowering them for everyone. We’d borrow only to invest in things that build future capacity — housing, energy, transport, education — never to cover day‑to‑day running costs.

Every major tax and spending change would be independently costed and published in full. We’d welcome multinational investment, but close the loopholes that let large firms route profits abroad to sidestep UK tax. Every big policy would carry public metrics and an expiry date: if the data says it isn’t working, we change it or scrap it, and say so.

The NHS is extraordinary and badly run at once. We’d treat efficiency as a form of care: better procurement, digitised admin, less duplication, smarter triage, and honest outcome reporting. Used well, technology — including AI — can take real pressure off the front line.

On mental health and addiction, we’d rather act early than wait for crisis. The funding detail for an ageing society and social care is something we’re still working through with people who know the sector.

Our flagship. Most people don’t remember much of what they were taught, so we’d give back one to two hours a day (20 minutes at primary age) to genuinely useful life skills, taught every year and tested on whether you can actually do them. Those on an academic track keep their subjects largely unchanged.

We’d subsidise apprenticeships and adult skills, and stop treating student loans as a profit centre — charging interest at cost so the loan is actually repaid rather than written off decades later.

Read the full education plan

We’d realign incentives so support reaches the people who need it without becoming a way of life passed down the generations — carefully, over time, never through a cliff‑edge. Most taxpayers would happily spend the same money knowing it reaches people who are contributing and those genuinely in need.

On housing, we’d keep building, with heat pumps and solar as standard on new homes. Renting is a two‑way street: landlords must keep homes safe, and tenants must hold up their side of an agreement freely entered into. On energy and water bills, we’d stop households being overcharged. Why so few people are homeless in a rich country, and what actually fixes it, is something we want to get right rather than sloganeer about.

We’d welcome people head‑hunted by a firm or the NHS, and students — with a year afterwards to find skilled work. Beyond that, the borders need to be genuinely controlled. Crucially, the blame belongs with the politicians who let the system drift, not with the people who came; most of us would do the same in their shoes. Tightening the system fairly is also how we starve the far right of the resentment it feeds on.

On crime, we want clever policing, not just more of it. Cutting re‑offending is the biggest prize; we think it runs through purpose, confidence and relationships, and we’re working with people in the field on what actually works.

We’d keep armed forces strong enough that our allies value us — so that when we need them, they show up. A country that can only ever take, never help, is one nobody rushes to defend. Our instinct is firmly anti‑war and pro‑alliance.

Net zero matters, and we’d pursue it alongside other countries so everyone plays their part. We’d back the cheapest clean energy per pound — mainly solar and wind, with nuclear and storage for reliability — and spend the very first pounds on insulation and efficiency, because the cheapest energy is the energy you never need to generate. We’d help farmers add solar and wind that can power nearby villages.

We’d run Parliament more like a serious organisation and less like a stage for clips. Our representatives wouldn’t take paid lobbying work, and any second job would be declared, capped and free of conflicts. An independent ethics body would hold every party, including us, to account for claims made without sound evidence.

We won’t pay people to do nothing, but we won’t crash services with mass sackings either. We’d control headcount through natural turnover and redeployment, and move the time saved to the front line.

We’d use technology, including AI, to strip duplicated admin out of the highest‑volume systems — HMRC, DWP, NHS, courts, local government — and redirect the time saved to frontline work, with retraining where roles genuinely disappear.

On fairness at work: much of the gender pay gap looks to us like a motherhood penalty, so we’re developing a Family Work Bonus to help the lower earner or a single parent catch up after stepping back to raise children. On free speech: you should be able to criticise, argue and joke freely; what you shouldn’t be able to do is hide behind anonymity to abuse people. Our working idea is that platforms verify who you are while keeping you anonymous to the public unless you commit a serious offence — a proposal we know needs careful expert and civil‑liberties scrutiny.