The Social Market Foundation has reacted to the Labour Party manifesto, as well as specific policies – including those on housing, taxes, net zero and immigration and skills.
On the overall manifesto, SMF Director Theo Bertram said:
“The Ming vase manifesto: change but with caution; great determination, little detail. There are no fireworks, no surprises, no great adventure but plenty of policies that Labour has already announced. It’s not fair to say it is without ambition or new ideas but it is light on detail. If the polls are right, Labour will enter Downing St on July 5 with a huge majority in favour of a clear mandate for change that is significantly undefined.”
Ambition – 6/10 – If today was the first time Labour was announcing GB Energy, rail nationalisation and a new industrial strategy, the manifesto might be regarded as bold so the fact that these are pre-announced and familiar doesn’t diminish their ambition. The extravagances of Labour’s previous two manifestos have been traded for commitments that are likely to be actually delivered in government. Notably there is no bold commitment on public sector reform, even though it is sorely needed.
Originality – 3/10 – There are some genuinely new commitments (votes at 16 and the national wealth fund are not to be found in the other manifestos) but this is not a manifesto that will be remembered for being bold and distinct. The chapter on policing and criminal justice does not sound vastly different from the Tories. The chapter on skills and education is forthright on the damage caused by the Tories but less striking on the solutions.
Affordability – 8/10 – The commitments on which taxes will be frozen are not balanced by which taxes will be raised. The door is left open to wealth taxes and much needed council tax revaluation but we will have to wait to see what Labour does in government.
Detail – 2/10 – The manifesto is as long as a short novel and yet we still are no clearer on the character or plot of the next Labour government. There is more unsaid than said.
Workability – 7/10 – The whole political premise is based on growth: if the UK exceeds expectations, even marginally, then Labour will be able to invest as it reforms public services; if not, reform will be matched with cuts, which will be politically challenging. The strategy for growth is stability plus the industrial strategy but with inevitable tax rises on wealth and the private sector, will that strategy be enough?
On the economy, Aveek Bhattacharya, Research Director at SMF, said:
“In keeping with the rest of the manifesto, there were no big surprises in Labour’s plan for the economy. As we have previously identified, the party will hope to profit from a ‘dullness dividend’ from greater stability, industrial strategy driven by stronger partnerships with business, investment (in large part from pension funds), and planning reform. Less widely appreciated, but clear from the manifesto, is that Labour sees its New Deal for Working People as economic, not just social, policy – hoping that greater security, pay and flexibility will drive up workers’ productivity.”
“It is good to see the inclusion of a plan to reform the British Business Bank, and encourage it to focus more effort outside London and the South East – something we’ve called for at the Social Market Foundation to boost high growth potential firms.”
On taxes, Sam Robinson, Senior Researcher at SMF, said:
“There were few fireworks on tax in this manifesto, which conformed to Labour’s cautious rhetoric. While there are sensible proposals on closing loopholes on Capital Gains Tax and ending non-dom status, there was nothing to set pulses racing. At only £8.5 billion, the scale of Labour’s revenue-raising plans are modest; although this revenue is plausibly earmarked in the costings document, it is hard to see how such sums will drive a step change in Britain’s economic fortunes.
“Perhaps the most eye-catching proposal was to replace the system of Business Rates. Like most policies in the manifesto, this wasn’t a new announcement. Replacing Business Rates would be a good idea. But it is odd, and slightly disconcerting, that we still don’t even have an outline of what Labour would replace it with.”
On supporting mutual and co-operative business, Jake Shepherd, Senior Researcher at SMF, said:
“It is refreshing to see Labour commit to diverse business ownership, especially their bold pledge to double the size of the co-operative and mutuals sector. These organisations prioritise members’ interests, promote business resilience, and have a strong sense of purpose, with the potential to deliver a great deal of social good to the UK. However, the details are unclear – it is uncertain what “doubling” means, nor do we know how the Party plans to get there.”
On housebuilding and planning reform, Gideon Salutin, Senior Researcher at SMF, said:
“For a policy that has been a centrepiece of Labour’s campaign, the manifesto is vague on planning reform. The party promises to ‘slash red tape’, restore mandatory housing targets, and provide more affordable homes, but fails to explain what actual changes residents and homebuilders can expect.”
The detailed policies are welcome, as is funding for additional planning officers, fast-tracking approvals on brownfield sites, and raising taxes on buyers who are not UK residents – something we at the SMF have previously called for. These are policies the British people desperately need to unlock land and money for housebuilding. Labour’s on the right track, but the devil is still in the details.”
On rental market and affordable housing, Jamie Gollings, Deputy Research Director at SMF, said:
“Labour seemed primed to take action to ban no-fault evictions early in the next parliament, if they win. This, alongside banning new leasehold flats and preventing extortionate ground rents and service charges will be welcome news for private renters. They have pledged to ‘empower renters’ to challenge severe rent hikes, although not specified how. As SMF has previously urged, it should look to do so by giving renters more automatic prompting when they face onerous rent increases, and reforming the dispute mechanism to tilt it in renters’ favour to remove the risk of rents going up even faster after a dispute settlement.”
“Labour’s plans on cheaper rental housing also lacks specifics. It wants stock to increase at a rate not seen for a generation, but there are no figures to test that by. There are no big promises here, and whilst right to buy discounts will be reviewed, and protections on existing social stock from right to buy will be ‘increased’, it seems that particular Thatcherite legacy will survive.”
On migration, Jonathan Thomas, Senior Fellow at SMF, said:
As set out in our analysis of the two main parties’ respective election positions on immigration, Labour’s plan is to reduce net migration by reducing the UK’s demand for overseas workers by training and upskilling local workers and improving working conditions. Key to success here will be willingness to stick with a plan that will take time to yield results, but also, in the context of economic growth, to balance the requirements so as to be sufficiently challenging, but also practicably workable, for business.
On fraud and policing, Richard Hyde, Senior Researcher at SMF, said:
“The recognition of the scale of the fraud problem in the Labour manifesto is welcome. So too is the proposal to build upon the current fraud strategy. There are also positive words about getting tech companies to do more, higher levels of investment in specialist law enforcement capabilities and, potentially, re-organisations to make the most of those investments. Yet there is a notable absence of any specific plans for delivering on these ambitions. The promise to ‘work with technology companies’– which is already happening to some degree, comes with no sense of how Labour might take this to the next level, if, indeed, they will.
Further, failure to allocate any of the spending for the proposed 13,000 additional police and other law enforcement staff to economic crime is likely to limit the impact on fraud levels, of any other measures.”
On opportunities and skills, Dani Payne, Senior Researcher at SMF, said:
“Labour’s skills and training manifesto pledges can be characterised as cautious ambition, light on detail and void of any new big-ticket items. It is promising to see greater political attention given to Further Education, apprenticeships and adult retraining, but whilst the destination is clear – to have a world-class skills system – Labour seem intent on keeping the map to themselves. For a party so significantly ahead in the polls, the lack of policy commitments to really get excited about is disappointing. But if that means the plans still aren’t set, they should consider opening up student maintenance funding to further education pupils, as part of their integration of further and higher education.
The university sector will be more concerned about what the manifesto doesn’t say than what it does: nothing on how Labour would solve funding issues, and a surprising absence on maintenance grants for students, which would have fit perfectly with their opportunity mission. But reading between the lines there are some areas to welcome, on regulation and teaching standards, which could represent a more sensible approach to quality assurance.”
On the warmer homes, Niamh O Regan, Researcher said:
“After Labour’s announcement earlier in the year that they were almost halving their planned annual green investment from £28bn to £15bn, it is good to see and additional £1.1bn a year commitment to making 5 million homes warmer over the course of the parliament. But the finer detail is lacking. There is no mechanism to link the additional investment to a specific EPC target, or to target the most inefficient homes. Similarly, the commitment to ensuring homes in the private rental sector meet minimum energy efficiency standards does not indicate if this means maintaining the existing EPC E minimum, or returning to the EPC C target which the Tories scrapped last Autumn.”
On electric vehicles, Gideon Salutin, Senior researcher said:
“Labour’s decision to reinstate the 2030 phase-out of new petrol and diesel cars is welcome, as is standardising battery information. These will affirm confidence among EV buyers and will allow manufacturers to make long term plans.
However, more needs to be done to ensure these EVs go to the households that need them most. EVs can save households thousands of pounds in the long run, but their high up-front price leaves them out of reach for millions. Social leasing, which subsidises the cost of car leasing for low-income households, could pull hundreds of thousands out of poverty for a fraction of the cost of other policies, cleaning our air and making our streets healthier.”
On child poverty, Jamie Gollings, Deputy Research Director at SMF, said:
“Despite pointing to the staggering rise of 700,000 among those in child poverty, under Conservative government, it is disappointing to see that the most obvious and impactful lever to address the problem at Labour’s disposal – removing the two-child benefit cap – is set to continue gathering cobwebs.”
On curriculum and assessment reform, John Asthana Gibson, Researcher said:
“It is encouraging that Labour has fully committed to carrying out an expert review of curriculum and assessment in its election manifesto. The problems with what we teach and how we assess are particularly pressing at GCSE level: The inordinate amount of content students have to revise for only serves to compound this problem, exacerbating the pressures teachers face to deliver rote learning in classrooms.
There are ways to rectify this problem, and Labour should be bold in doing so. It should aim to slim down GCSEs, both in terms of the content assessed and importance to schools. This will reduce the amount of time and energy going to the wrong places and redirect it to facilitate productive teaching. It should be the focus of Labour’s curriculum and assessment reform.”
On public health, Dr Aveek Bhattacharya, Research Director at SMF, said:
“Labour’s recognition that prevention is better than cure is promising, as is it reaffirmed commitment to a smokefree generation and restrictions on junk food advertising. Yet it will need to go much further if it is to measure up to the scale of the challenge on preventable illness. Any mention of alcohol, let alone taxes or minimum pricing, would have been nice. And the local authority public health grant – down by a quarter since 2016 – was also conspicuous by its absence.”
On gambling, Dr James Noyes, Senior Fellow at SMF, said,
“As long-standing advocates of gambling reform, we were pleased to see mention of it in today’s manifesto. However, we were surprised that there was no concrete explanation of what this reform might mean. Labour was the party that led calls for a review of the 2005 Gambling Act in the first place. That review has now happened, with many of the policies supported by Labour since watered down and cut short by the timing of the general election. If Labour is serious about reducing gambling harm, it must be bold in its renewed calls for reform – with strong regulation, not self-regulation, as the way forward.”
Notes
Contact
For media enquiries, please contact Impact Officer Richa Kapoor, at richa@smf.co.uk
