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General election 2024: manifestos round up
Tuesday, 18 June 2024, Honor Riley, Policy Officer and Siobhan Silas, Senior Policy and Public Affairs Executive
Last week was a big week in politics, with some of the major parties contesting seats in the next UK parliament having released their manifestos.
Central to parties’ campaigns, manifestos seek to lay out how, if elected, political parties will address the issues important to voters across the UK.
Here at CIEH, we are interested in how these parties aim to address environmental health and promote its importance throughout the next UK parliament. The CIEH Policy and Campaigns Team have been busy analysing party manifestos to see where each of the parties pledge to address the issues important to our members.
Below provides insight from our Policy and Campaigns Team that looks at some of the policies included in the Liberal Democrats, the Conservatives, the Green Party, Plaid Cymru and Labour manifestos and where they may address environmental health-related issues as well as where any commitments align with our Manifesto for environmental health 2024.
The Liberal Democrats released their manifesto on 10 June, with their main focus on the NHS and social care.
The Liberal Democrat manifesto claims that the Party will address various issues relevant to environmental health. Most notably, CIEH welcome their commitments to introduce a National Food Strategy whilst providing local authorities with greater powers and resources to inspect and monitor food production, as we shared in our press release on 10 June. Alongside this, the Liberal Democrat Party’s commitment to pass a Clean Air Act aligns with CIEH’s consistent campaign for an ambitious holistic approach to air pollution.
The manifesto also shared commitments to address other environmental health-related issues including, but not exhaustive to:
Housing:
- Make homes warmer and cheaper to heat with a ten-year emergency upgrade programme, starting with free insulation and heat pumps for those on low incomes, and ensure that all new homes are zero-carbon.
- Immediately banning no-fault evictions, making three-year tenancies the default, and creating a national register of licensed landlords.
Port Health
- Ensuring all imported food meets UK standards for health and welfare, and that goods are properly checked.
Environmental Protection
- Establish a new Net Zero Delivery Authority to coordinate action across government departments and work with devolved administrations.
- Hand more powers and resources to local councils for local net zero strategies.
- Transform water companies into public benefit companies, banning bonuses for water bosses until discharges and leaks end, and replacing Ofwat with a new regulator with new powers to prevent sewage dumps.
- Set binding targets to stop the decline of our natural environment and ‘double nature’ by 2050: doubling the size of the Protected Area Network, doubling the area of most important wildlife habitats, doubling the abundance of species and doubling woodland cover by 2050.
- Strengthen the Office for Environmental Protection and provide more funding to the Environment Agency and Natural England to help protect the environment and enforce environmental laws.
- Strengthening the powers of local authorities to monitor the health of our rivers, lakes and coastlines, restore our natural environment and tackle climate change.
- Appoint a cross-departmental Minister for Rural Communities, to make sure that rural voices are heard across government.
The Conservative Party manifesto was launched on Tuesday 11 June; with the slogan “Clear Plan, Bold Action, Secure Future”, the manifesto seeks to demonstrate how, if re-elected, the Conservative party will aim to tackle the issues important to the UK electorate.
The Conservative manifesto addressed a variety of issues relevant to environmental health. Most notably, CIEH welcomed the Conservative Party manifesto commitment to ensuring all future trade deals adhere to UK standards. This relates directly to a CIEH manifesto ask to urge the UK Government to commit to maintaining and improving our high food standards in any future trade deals. CIEH also acknowledges the Conservative Party’s commitment to reintroducing the Renters Reform Bill in their First Kings Speech as well as introducing stricter penalties for environmental health related issues such as fly tipping.
The manifesto also shared commitments to address other environmental health-related issues including, but not exhaustive to:
Workforce
- Create 100,000 more apprenticeships in England every year by the end of the next Parliament.
Public Health
- Reintroduce the Tobacco and Vapes Bill in the first King’s Speech. They will continue to tackle childhood and adult obesity and will legislate to restrict the advertising of products high in fat, salt and sugar.
Housing
- Pass a Renters Reform Bill that will deliver fairness in the rental market for landlords and renters alike. They will deliver the court reforms necessary to fully abolish Section 21 and strengthen other grounds for landlords to evict private tenants guilty of anti-social behaviour.
Food Safety
- Improve public sector procurement to deliver their goal that at least 50% of food expenditure is spent on food produced locally or to higher environmental production standards.
Port Health
- Introduce a legally binding target to enhance food security. The target will apply UK-wide alongside our UK Food Security Index. This will also feed into the development of the Land Use Framework.
Environmental Protection
- Working with regulators to further hold companies to account, including banning executive bonuses if a company has committed a serious criminal breach.
- Extending the £50 water rebate for those in the South West across Parliament.
- Using fines from water companies to invest in river restoration projects, including linking up thriving habitats to multiply the benefits for wildlife and water quality. This will create a river recovery network, modelled on the nature recovery network, and create new destinations for people to enjoy across England. It will take a more local, tailored approach like the plan for the River Wye.
- Deliver enhanced penalties for fly tipping, giving councils new tools to help tackle offenders.
The Green Party released their manifesto on Wednesday 12 June, with the slogan ‘Real Hope. Real Change’. The headline proposals focused upon their calls to overhaul the tax system to target the highest earners, alongside commitments to expand social housing, public health care and climate mitigation.
The Green Party manifesto made several commitments that align with CIEH manifesto asks. Most notably, as raised in our recent press release, elected Green MPs will push for an additional £5bn in local authorities to enable their key role in the transition to a green economy, aligning with CIEH’s repeated calls to tackle the current under-funding crisis. In our response, we urged the party to utilise their £12.4bn investment in skills and training to contribute towards addressing the upskilling and reskilling needs across the Environmental Health profession.
The manifesto also shared commitments to address other environmental health-related issues including, but not exhaustive to:
Workforce
- Deliver a regional strategy to maximise the contribution to the net-zero transition from existing jobs and businesses.
Housing
- Transform the planning system to reduce the environmental impact of new construction.
- Ensure that all new homes meet Passivhaus or equivalent standards and house builders include solar panels and heat pumps on all new homes where appropriate.
- Deliver a local-authority-led, street-by-street retrofit programme to adapt UK buildings to more extreme climate conditions:
- £29bn over the next five years to insulate homes to an EPC B standard or above as part of a ten-year programme.
- £4bn over the next five years to insulate other buildings to a high standard.
- £9bn over the next five years for low-carbon heating systems (e.g. heat pumps) for homes and other buildings.
- A new stable rental tenancy and an end to no-fault evictions.
Food Safety
- Introduce policies that ensure that good quality surplus food is not wasted.
- Better educate the population about food and health and build links between farms, schools and the wider community.
- Tackle the unfairness in the system through revitalising the abandoned National Food Strategy.
Environmental Protection
- A £40bn investment per year in the shift to a green economy over the course of the next Parliament – including £7bn annually on climate adaptation.
- Stop all new fossil fuel projects in the UK.
- Increase DEFRA’s budget by £1.5bn, allowing an increase in funding for the Environment Agency and Natural England, to support the vital work they do to protect our environment.
- Take the water companies back into public ownership to tackle water pollution.
- A new Clean Air (Human Rights) Act, to give everyone the right to breathe clean air.
- Regulate biofuels to end greenwashing and ensure they provide genuine net carbon savings. This includes ending the practice of importing wood for burning at the Drax power station and end subsidies for biomass.
Public Health
- Ensure public health is a cross-government priority.
Plaid Cymru released their manifesto on 13 June, with the strapline “for fairness, for ambition, for Wales.” CIEH welcomed their commitment to develop a ‘preventative public health strategy’ and emphasised our manifesto ask to involve our members in its development. Our manifesto ask echoes this commitment but seeks to ensure that the creation on any new public health strategy includes environmental health expertise.
Plaid Crymu’s manifesto made various further pledges that coordinate with CIEH’s manifesto. The commitment to reaching net zero targets as well as their commitments to address water pollution are welcomed environmental pledges. Similarly, their pledge to support long-term plans to improve energy efficiency in homes echoes our manifesto ask on housing and net zero.
The manifesto also shared commitments to address other environmental health-related issues including, but not exhaustive to:
Public Health
- Develop a preventative public health strategy which rebalances resources to prevent people becoming ill with the aim to help the NHS overall by stopping patients entering the system earlier than necessary.
- In the face of increased threats from new and emerging animal and plant diseases, they will also support steps to strengthen the UK’s disease surveillance networks, including protecting the UK’s scanning surveillance budget.
Housing
- They support a long-term plan for retrofitting existing properties that would make them more energy efficient, thereby reducing costs and carbon emissions.
Port Health
- They will give Wales a veto over future trade deals that undermine Welsh agricultural communities.
Environmental Protection
- Plaid Cymru recognises that the climate and nature emergencies are the biggest threat to mankind on a global scale, and reaffirm their commitment to reaching net zero targets in Wales by 2035 and reversing biodiversity decline by 2030.
- They would enact section 48(1) of the Wales Act 2017, which would fully align the Senedd’s legislative competence over water with the geographical boundary of Wales. They would also formally request powers from the UK over the licensing of sewage in Wales.
- They would maintain the ban on fracking, they are opposed to proposals for gas-fired peaking plants in Wales, and on new open cast coal mines.
The Labour Party released their manifesto on 13 June, outlining their ‘steps to change Britain’. Labour’s headline proposals were concentrated upon delivering economic growth without ‘alarms or surprises’, with major investments promised for their ‘Green Prosperity Plan’, supporting the NHS, and transforming the education system.
A variety of Labour’s manifesto pledges align with the asks set out in CIEH’s 2024 manifesto. Crucially, CIEH welcomed the commitment to embed a greater focus on prevention and local delivery throughout the entire healthcare system , which serve as a crucial step to achieve our ask to strengthen the capacity of environmental health teams within the public health workforce.
The Labour manifesto also shared further commitments that will impact environmental health-related issues including, but not exhaustive to:
Public Health
- Introduce a ban on vapes being branded and advertised to appeal to children.
- Embed a greater focus on prevention throughout the entire healthcare system and supporting service as part of the plans to achieve 40,000 more NHS appointments.
Housing
Labour’s housing proposals focused upon their plans to scale up development to meet their goal of 1.5m new homes and improve energy efficiency.
- Invest an additional £6.6 billion over the next parliament to upgrade five million homes, as part of the ‘Warm Homes Plan’, which will be rolled out in partnership with local authorities.
- Ensure homes in the private rented sector meet minimum energy efficiency standards by 2030.
- Immediately update the National Policy Planning Framework and restore mandatory housing targets.
- Take tougher action to ensure that planning authorities have up-to-date Local Plans and reform and strengthen the presumption in favour of sustainable development.
- A brownfield first approach to development, with a commitment to fast-tracking the approval of urban brownfield sites.
Environmental Protection
- Restore plans to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030.
- £23.7bn green investment into improving carbon capture, energy efficiency of UK homes and the creation of GB Energy to drive renewable energy.
- A commitment to improve climate resilience and preparation across central government, local authorities, local communities, and emergency services.
- Tackle water pollution through granting regulators new powers to block the payment of bonuses to executives who pollute our waterways and bring criminal charges against persistent law breakers. There will also be an introduction of automatic and serve fines for wrongdoing and independent monitoring of every outlet.
Food Safety
- Half of all food purchased across the public sector to be locally produced or certified to higher environmental standards.
- Introduction of a land-use framework and make environment land management schemes work for farmers and nature.
Want to know more?
CIEH’s general election campaign is led by our 2024 manifesto, which seeks to put environmental health at the forefront of the next UK government’s agenda. For more information on our specific policy asks, read our full manifesto here. To understand more about our policy work within each of the disciplines of environmental health, check out our Advisory Panel pages.
