Election 2024: what the smaller party manifestos would mean for your money

With under two weeks to go until the general election, political parties are publishing their manifestos. 

Here, we provide an at-a-glance look at smaller parties, specifically the Green Party, Plaid Cymru,  Reform UK, and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to reveal how their plans for tax, benefits, housing and all things money-related could affect you.

We've covered the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat  and Scottish National Party manifestos in separate stories. 

 Green Party manifesto

The Green Party launched its manifesto on 12 June 2024. 

The manifesto pledges a '£40bn investment per year in the shift to a green economy'. 

Tax

• Introduce a wealth tax of 1% on assets above £10m and 2% on assets above £1bn.
• Align capital gains tax rates with income tax.
• Align tax rates for investment income with tax and national insurance (NI) rates on employment income. 
• Remove the NI upper earnings, which limits NI contributions for higher earners. 
• Introduce a carbon tax.

Housing

Housebuilding

• Provide 150,000 new socially rented homes each year via house building and the purchase/refurbishment of existing housing. 
• Require councils to spread small developments across their area.
• Require developers to invest in local services such as health and transport.
• Ensure new homes meet energy efficiency standards, with developers installing solar panels and heat pumps on new homes where appropriate. 

Home owners

• Invest £29bn in insulating homes to an EPC ‘B’ standard or above, as part of a 10-year programme.
• Invest £9bn in low carbon-heating systems for homes and other buildings.

Renters

• Push for rent controls to be introduced for local authorities.
• Introduce stable tenancies and abolish no-fault evictions.
• Introduce private residential tenancy boards to resolve disputes.

Social care

• Introduce free personal care to ensure dignity in old age and for the disabled.
• Increase pay rates and introduce a new career structure for carers.
• Invest an additional £3bn in local authorities to provide children’s social care.

Pensions and investments

• Ensure the state pension increases in line with inflation and keeps pace with wage rises.
• Equate the rate of pension tax relief with the basic rate of income tax to fund social care.
• Make pension and investment funds remove fossil fuels from their portfolios by 2030.

Vorteile

• Increase Universal Credit and legacy benefits by £40 a week.
• Abolish the two-child benefit cap.
• End the bedroom tax.
• Introduce a universal basic income in the long term.
• Increase disability benefits by 5%.
• Reform Personal Independence Payment (PIP) tests. 

Banking and scams

• Require banks to present a strategy for divesting in fossil fuel assets.
• Introduce a windfall tax on banks that make ‘excessive’ profits

Transport

• Bring railways, water companies and ‘big 5’ energy companies into public ownership. 
• Invest £19bn over five years to improve public transport and create new cycleways and footpaths.
• Introduce free bus travel for under 18s.
• Introduce a frequent flyer levy.
• Ban domestic flights for journeys that take less than three hours by train.
• Make road tax proportional to vehicle weight.

Jobs and pay

• Move to a four-day working week.
• Introduce a Charter of Workers’ Rights, including the right to strike and an obligation for employers to recognise trade unions. 
• Increase the minimum wage to £15 an hour, regardless of age.
• Provide equal rights for workers, including those in the ‘gig economy’ and on zero-hours contracts. 
• Investment £12.4bn in skills and training to equip workers to play a role in the green economy. 
• Reduce VAT in industries such as hospitality and the arts, and increase VAT on financial services and private education. 

Childcare and education

• Ensure all children to have a free school meal each day
• Introduce free breakfast clubs for children to up to Year 6. 
• End tuition fees.
• End high-stakes testing at primary and secondary schools, and abolish OFSTED.

 Plaid Cymru manifesto

Plaid Cymru launched its manifesto on 13 June 2024. 

It pledged for a 'fairer, more ambitious future' for Wales and said it would address the cost of living crisis. 

Tax

• Equalise capital gains tax with income tax.
• Investigate increasing National Insurance contributions for higher earners. 
• Support introducing a wealth tax.
• Support removing the tax on renewable liquid fuels, to make them more affordable for rural households who want to reduce home heating emissions.

Housing

Housebuilding

• Develop a plan to deliver a significant expansion in social housing to meet local housing needs in all parts of Wales.
• Reform the planning system so that it is consistent with local needs and aspirations, rather than reflecting the interests of developers.

Home owners

• Close loopholes which allow people to claim their holiday homes are legitimate lettings businesses.

Renters  

• Introduce the 'Right to Adequate Housing' bill, which would include powers to introduce rent controls and other interventions to make housing more affordable.
• Ensure the Local Housing Rate Allowance is retained at the 30th percentile of market rents.

Social care

• Continue to work towards a National Care Service for Wales.
• Pay social care workers at least £1 above the Real Living Wage in order to make the job more attractive and improve recruitment, and make this index linked.
• Scrap dental charge increases.  

Pensions and investments

• Keep the triple-lock pension increase, which ensures the state pension rises by inflation, CPI, or 2.5% (whichever is higher).
• Increase the income tax personal allowance for pensioners in line with the triple lock.
• Demand the UK Government relinquishes its entitlement to the miners' pension scheme investment reserve.

Vorteile

• Increase child benefit by £20 per week for all children.
• Scrap the ‘two-child’ limit on universal credit payments.
• Link core benefits with inflation.
• Support an 'Essentials Guarantee level' to ensure that all individuals and families receive at least the minimum required for daily life.
• Review the provision of non-universal or automatic benefits to understand which can be made easier to access through auto-enrolment.
• Support using alternative methods of calculating entitlement to Universal Credit, including annual income.
• Amend how Cold Weather Payment assessments are made to better reflect local conditions.  

Household bills

• Push for changes to how the National Grid is structured, so that communities can benefit directly from local energy projects.
• Reduce standing charges for energy bills.
• Introduce a Social Tariff for Energy.
• Devolve the responsibilities of Ofgem to regulate the design of whole-systems energy grids and markets.
• Create a long-term plan for retrofitting homes and create centres of excellence for retrofitting skills.
• Accelerate work to bring fast broadband to the areas hardest to reach.
• Guarantee a high speed broadband connection to every home and business.

Banking and the high street

• Re-introduce the cap on bankers’ bonuses.
• Reform the Development Bank of Wales so it can take and profit from greater equity shares in emerging businesses and invest in infrastructure projects.
• Develop a community bank to provide local banking services to customers in communities where private banking institutions have left the market.
• Support the reform of business rates in Wales, in order to establish a system which better supports our small businesses.

Transport

• Favour the renationalisation of major bus services, and integrate bus and rail services so that they work for the benefit of passengers. 
• Keep the Older People’s Bus Pass, and investigate a similar scheme for young people.
• Support clear air zones near major centres of population, and traffic calming measures to increase road safety.  

Jobs and pay

• Reverse anti-strike legislation.
• Provide paid bereavement and miscarriage leave as ‘day one employment rights’.
• Outlaw fire and re-hire tactics and abolish compulsory zero-hours contracts.
• Establish the 'right to ‘disconnect'. This is a right not to be routinely contacted about work outside normal working hours.
• Reform shared parental leave.
• Support an increase in sick pay in line with maternity pay.
• Instigate a Welsh Freelancers Fund to support the creative sector. 

Childcare and education 

• Increase the availability of degree apprenticeships in the healthcare sector.
• Continue to campaign for universal free school meals to be extended to secondary school learners in years 7-11.
• Offer a grant of £5,000 to the Personal Learning Accounts of every individual over 25 to train or retrain. Make additional loans available to cover more expensive courses and maintenance costs for those who want to take courses full time.

 Reform UK manifesto

Reform UK published its manifesto on 17 June 2024, titled 'Our Contract With You'.

Tax

• Lift the income tax personal allowance to £20,000, taking seven million people out of income tax liability. Increase the higher rate threshold to £70,000. 
• All frontline NHS and social care staff to pay zero basic rate tax for three years.
• Introduce a 25% transferable marriage tax allowance, meaning no tax on the first £25,000 of income for either spouse. 
• Increase employer National Insurance rate from 13.8% to 20% for foreign workers to incentivise businesses to employ British citizens. Essential foreign health and care workers would be exempt from the tax, as would businesses who employ five staff members and under.
• Increase the stamp duty nil-rate band in England and Northern Ireland to £750,000. A rate of 2% would apply between £750,000 and £1.5m, and 4% over £1.5m. 
• Abolish inheritance tax for all estates under £2m. A rate of 20% would apply to estates over £2m, with the option to donate to charity instead. 
• Improve the competence of HMRC to 'collect billions in unpaid tax'. 
• Abolish business rates for high street-based small and medium businesses. Offset this with Online Delivery Tax at 4% for large, multinational enterprises.
• Introduce tax relief of 20% on all private healthcare and insurance.
• Lift the VAT registration threshold to £150,000.
• Abolish IR35 rules for sole traders. 
• Reform the tax system to be simpler.

Housing

House building

• Introduce fast-track planning and tax incentives for developments on brownfield sites.
• Enforce Section 106 agreements
• Introduce 'loose fit planning' for large developments, with pre-approved guidelines.
• Incentivise innovation to speed up building projects, including modular construction and digital technology. 

Renters

• Reform social housing law to prioritise local people. 
• Abolish the Renters Reform Bill, instead boost monitoring, appeals and enforcement processes for renters.

Landlords

• Scrap tax on mortgage interest for landlords.

Leasehold

• Make it cheaper and easier to extend leases to 990 years and buy freeholds. 

Social care

• Commence a Royal Commission inquiry into the social care system. 
• Simplify social care via introducing a single funding system. Bring flexibility, tax incentives and VAT breaks to the sector and reduce waste. 
• Stop larger care home providers avoiding tax by using offshore property structures. 

Pensions and investments

• Review the current pension system, which is 'riddled with complexity, huge cost and poor returns'. 

Vorteile

• Introduce a requirement for people to have five years of UK residency and employment before they can claim benefits.
• Reform benefit support to help people back to work, focusing on 16 to 34-year-olds. Tax relief for businesses that undertake apprenticeships.
• Withdraw benefits if a jobseeker fails to accept a job after two offers, or fails to find employment within four months.
• Make Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and Work Capability Assessments face-to-face. 
• Front-loading the Child Benefit system for children aged one to four years to give parents the choice to spend more time with their children.

Banking and scams

• Stop the Bank of England paying interest to commercial banks on quantitative easing (QE) reserves, saving £35bn per year. 
• Review the Online Safety Bill. 

Household bills

• Bring 50% of each utility into public ownership, with the other 50% to be owned by UK pension funds. 
• Lower fuel duty by 20p per litre, scrap VAT on energy bills and scrap environmental levies to reduce household bills. 
• Scrap net zero. 
• Charge those who fail to attend medical appointments without notice.
• Scrap the TV licence.
• Stop supermarket price fixing by giving powers to the Competition and Markets Authority. Help farmers sell their produce directly to the public and change planning laws to scrap business rates for farm shops.    

Transport

• Scrap HS2. 
• Ban Ultra Low Emission Zones (ULEZ) and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs). 
• Improve rail and road links, focusing on coastal regions, Wales, the North of England, and the Midlands. 

Jobs and pay

• Increase basic pay across the armed forces. 

Childcare and education

• Introduce new visa rules for international students that bar dependents. 
• Only allow international students with 'essential skills' to remain in the UK. 
• Introduce 20% tax relief on private education and remove VAT from fees.
• Scrap interest on student loans, and extend the capital repayment period to 45 years. 
• Universities to provide two-year undergraduate courses to reduce student debt
• Write off student fees pro rata per year over 10 years of NHS service for all doctors, nurses and medical staff.
• Free education both during and after service for military personnel.

Brexit

• Legislate to scrap retained EU laws 

 Democratic Unionist Party (DUP)

The DUP launched its Speaking Up For Northern Ireland manifesto on 24 June 2024.

Tax

• Oppose the freeze on the personal tax allowance and higher rate income tax threshold.
• Seek further reductions in National Insurance.
• Support an increase in the starting age for employee National Insurance.
• Encourage the government to explore moving to a single tax on all income, replacing Income Tax and National Insurance.
• Campaign to increase the VAT threshold for SMEs to £100,000 and then uprate it in line with inflation, and campaign to drive up the number of SMEs benefiting from government procurement spend, tax reliefs and business support.
• Explore the potential introduction of an online sales tax targeting online corporates and marketplaces.
• Advocate for a reduction in corporate tax across the United Kingdom.

Social care

• Drive waiting lists down by fostering large-scale partnerships between health and social care in NI and national independent providers or not-for-profit-organisation. 

Pensions and investments

• Act to support the triple lock on state pensions.
• Support the personal allowance for pensioners always being above the amount of the state pension.
• Oppose any further rise in the state pension age.
• Support a review of auto-enrolment whilst ensuring no additional costs for business.
• Campaign to ensure Northern Ireland receives necessary funding to address age discrimination identified in the McCloud judgement relating to changes to public service pensions.
• Continue to seek suitable compensation and fair transitional state pension arrangements for women born in the 1950s.
• Support small business owners to fund their retirement by retaining Business Asset Disposal Relief and keeping the value of relief in line with increases to the standard lifetime allowance for pensions.

Vorteile

• Support the uprating of benefits in line with inflation.
• Implement an ‘Essential Guarantee’ in universal credit, ensuring the standard allowance cannot reduce below a legal minimum amount required to afford basic essentials.
• Remove the two-child limit on universal credit for three and four-child households.
• Apply the high-income chiild benefit charge on the basis of household, rather than individual, income.

Banking, scams and consumer rights

• Work with banks to establish more banking hubs on our high streets and town centres.
• Campaign to ensure government and financial institutions fund a scheme covering establishment costs for banking hubs.
• Support continuity of local branch services while an alternative model is put in place. 
• Support tighter rules to protect businesses and consumers from 'debanking' and having their bank account frozen and closed unfairly.
• Oppose plans to allow AI developers to use existing music, literature and works of art without permission or payment and disregarding copyright law.
• Seek more robust but proportionate regulation of data and emerging technologies to crackdown on abuse, harmful practices such as deepfakes, and efforts to undermine democracy through misinformation and disinformation.
• Support tough measures to address all forms of elder abuse, including financial crime.
• Seek a review by DWP of the requirement for those experiencing domestic abuse to apply for split payments of certain benefits.  
• Bring more small businesses under the scope of the FCA consumer duty and Financial Ombudsman Service.

Household bills

• Freeze Vehicle Excise Duty and look to better link future rates to road use.
• Maintain the freeze on fuel duty.
• Tackle the soaring cost of motor insurance by opposing any increase in insurance premium tax.
• Supporting a UK-wide investigation into the fairness of insurance industry practices – including reviewing the role of the Financial Conduct Authority.
• Look to increase transparency in how insurance products are advertised so businesses and consumers can make informed decisions and support a market review into professional indemnity insurance (PII).
• Address the soaring cost of motor insurance for young people, including through exploring the potential for measures such as graduated driving licences, a restriction on the number of young passengers and a lower blood alcohol limit for young drivers.
• Campaign to reverse the decision by the BBC to stop free licence fees to all those aged over 75s. Currently, it's only available if receiving pension credit.
• Seek the abolition of the BBC licence fee and the creation of a successful subscription-based service to replace it. In the interim, the licence should be frozen, then cut.
• Campaign to abolish VAT on domestic electricity bills.

Transport

• Continue to advocate for the abolition of domestic air passenger duty.
• Commit to the 2035 ban on sales of new petrol and diesel vehicles and further review these plans to take account of the high upfront costs of transitioning to electric vehicles, such as the practical impact on businesses and the availability of EV charging infrastructure.

Jobs and pay

• Continue to support rises to the national living wage.
• Maintain the national minimum wage above two-thirds of median income.
• Engage in discussions with the UK government about public sector pay across the UK, including as part of a new fiscal framework for Northern Ireland.

Childcare and education

• Increase the tax-free childcare allowance from 20% to 35%.
• Remove the cap on tax free childcare above £2,000.
• Implement an ‘essentials guarantee’ in universal credit, ensuring the standard allowance cannot reduce below a legal minimum amount required to afford basic essentials.
• Scrap VAT on school uniforms.
• Work with employers and HMRC to incentivise the workplace nursery model in NI, including through removing unnecessary complexity.
• Promote access to capital grants for businesses and employers seeking to establish workplace nursery sites.
• Reduce disparities in support between under-20s who undertake apprenticeships and those in this age group who remain in school or education, including through retaining child benefit or subsidising travel costs.
• Reintroduce financial incentives for businesses that hire young apprentices at risk of long-term unemployment.
• Promote apprenticeships as part of a strategy for supporting young people leaving care.
• Deliver more all-age, public sector and SME-led apprenticeships and ensure funding arrangements enable those undertaking apprenticeships to work anywhere in the United Kingdom.

Brexit

• Support the development of a new UK export strategy with a specific trade plan for NI. 
• Seek to provide export vouchers to help firms with the costs of exporting to a new market for the first time or for travel to international trade shows in new or emerging markets.
• Work toward the implementation of a single trade window for imports and exports.
• Seek protection for sensitive food and animal products in trade negotiations

What about Sinn Féin?

Sinn Féin launched its manifesto 'Strong Leadership Positive Change' on 19 June 2024.

It calls for the devolution of fiscal powers, including allowing more progressive taxation and the power to increase the minimum wage. It also pledges to make childcare more accessible and affordable.

Which?'s consumer agenda

We recently published our own election manifesto, which sets out the reforms Which? believes the next government should implement to protect consumers.

Better retirement standards, protecting face-to-face banking services and a dedicated fraud minister are some of the money policies Which? wants to see from the next government.

Find out more in our consumer agenda for the government.,