14 Jun 2024

Election 2024: what would the Liberal Democrats' plans mean for your money?

Lib Dems announce pledges on tax, pensions, housing and more

The Liberal Democrats have launched their manifesto ahead of the 2024 general election, which will be held on 4 July.

The manifesto, titled 'For a Fair Deal', sets out the party's policies and how it plans to pay for them, should it win the election.

Read on to find out about the key personal finance and consumer pledges made by the Lib Dems, covering everything from social care to tax.

We've covered the key money pledges in the Labour, Conservative and Scottish National Party manifestos in separate stories.

You can also find key information from the Green Party, Plaid Cymru, Reform UK and Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) manifestos in our story on manifestos from smaller parties.

Tax

Reform capital gains tax to close loopholes.
Reverse tax cuts on bank profits.
Raise the tax-free personal allowance for income tax 'when public finances allow'.
Review the tax and National Insurance status of employees, dependent contractors and freelancers to ensure fair and comparable treatment.
Additional investment in HMRC to tackle tax avoidance and evasion.
Introduce 4% tax on share buyback schemes of FTSE 100 companies.
Scrap VAT on children’s toothbrushes and toothpaste.
Remove the VAT exemptions for private, first-class and business-class flights
Review further education funding, including the option of exempting colleges from VAT.
End retrospective tax changes such as the loan charge.

Housing

Building new homes

Build 380,000 homes each year across the UK, 150,000 of which would be social homes.
Build 10 new garden cities.
Introduce 'use it or lose it' planning permission.

Private renting

Ban no-fault evictions and make three-year tenancies the default.
Create a national register of licensed landlords.
Require landlords to upgrade the energy efficiency of their properties to EPC C or above by 2028.

Social housing

Give councils the power to end Right to Buy in their area.
Introduce Rent to Own model for social housing, where rent payments give tenants an increasing stake in the property until they own it outright after 30 years.
End rough sleeping within the next Parliament.

Leaseholders

Abolish residential leaseholds.
Cap ground rents to a nominal fee.
Remove dangerous cladding from all buildings without any financial contribution required from leaseholders.

Other

Give local authorities new powers to control second homes and short-term lets in their areas by allowing them to increase council tax by up to 500% where homes are being bought as second homes, with a stamp duty surcharge on overseas residents purchasing such properties.

Introduce free personal care.
Introduce paid carer's leave.
Introduce statutory guarantee of regular respite breaks for carers.
Make caring a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010.
Ban the sale of single-use vapes.
Protecting children from exposure to junk food by supporting local authorities to restrict outdoor advertising and restricting TV advertising to postwatershed.
Extending the soft drinks levy to juice-based and milk-based drinks that are high in added sugar.
Combat the harms caused by problem gambling by introducing the planned compulsory levy on gambling companies.

Pensions and investments

Maintain the pensions triple lock, so pensions increase each year in line with whichever is highest of inflation, wage rises or 2.5%.
Compensate WASPI women, who were born in the 1950s and have been affected by changes in the state pension age.
Require pension funds to show their portfolios are consistent with the Paris Agreement on climate change.
Increase powers for regulators to act if banks don't properly manage climate risks.

Vorteile

Remove the benefit cap and two-child limit.
Increase carer's allowance by £20 a week.
Reduce wait for universal credit from five weeks to five days.
End the spare room subsidy, which reduces the amount of benefits received depending on the number of additional bedrooms in a property.
Replace benefit sanctions regime with incentive-based scheme.
Expand the full rate of universal credit to parents under 25.
Reverse cut to bereavement support payment.
Introducing a ‘Toddler Top-Up’: an enhanced rate of Child Benefit for one-year olds.

Banking and scams

Require the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) to protect access to cash, expand access to bank accounts, deliver Sharia-compliant student finance, and support vulnerable customers.
Name and shame banks with the worst records on preventing fraud and reimbursing victims.
Require banks to reimburse victims of automated push payment (APP) scams unless there is clear evidence they are at fault.

Household bills

Launch Home Energy Update programme to give free insulation and heat pumps to low-income households.
Introduce social tariff of energy discounts for vulnerable households.
Provide incentives for installing heat pumps.
Ensure gigabit broadband access to all homes and businesses.
End regional differences in domestic energy bills.
Tackle rising prices through a national food strategy.
Ending the gender price gap so that women are not charged more than men for practically identical products or services marketed at them.
Provide access to free period products for anyone who needs them.
Protect motorists from rip-offs, including unfair insurance and petrol prices.
Expand Rural Fuel Duty Relief.
Turn water companies into public benefit companies, banbonuses for water bosses until discharges and leaks end, and replace Ofwat with a tough new regulator with new powers to prevent sewage dumps.
Introduce a single social tariff for water bills to help eliminate water poverty within the next Parliament

Transport

Roll out more electric car charging points.
Restore the 2030 deadline for all cars and small vans sold to be zero-emission.
Give more of the roads budget to local councils to maintain existing roads, pavements and cycleways, including repairing potholes.
Freeze rail fares.
Simplify public transport ticketing.
Maintain £2 bus fare cap while fares are reviewed.
Expand Rural Fuel Duty Relief.
Introduce a ‘Young Person’s Buscard’, similar to the Young Person’s Railcard, giving 19- to 25-year-olds a third off bus and tram fares.

Jobs and pay

Invest in green infrastructure, innovation and skills to boost economic growth and create good jobs and prosperity in every nation and region of the UK, while tackling the climate crisis. Scrap the lower apprentice rate of the minimum wage.
Boost small businesses and empower them to create new local jobs, including by abolishing business rates and replacing them with a Commercial Landowner Levy to help our high streets.
Establish an independent review to recommend a genuine living wage across all sectors.
Create a new 'dependent contractor' employment status between employed and self-employed, with entitlement to minimum earnings levels, sick pay and holidays.
Set a 20% higher minimum wage zero-hour contract workers at times of normal demand.
Establish carer's minimum wage, £2 above the national minimum wage.
Introduce a right to a fixed-hours contract after 12 months on a zero-hours contract.
Scrap the lower apprentice rate
Increase the rate of sick pay to line up with the national minimum wage, while expanding it to those earning less than £123 a week and being available from the first day of missing work instead of the fourth.
Double statutory maternity and shared parental pay to £350 a week.
Increase paternity leave to 90% of earnings with a cap for high earners, alongside a 'use it or lose it' leave month for fathers and partners.
Introduce paid neonatal care leave.
Longer-term plan to give families six weeks of 'use it or lose it' parental leave paid at 90% of earnings, and 46 weeks of parental leave shared between a couple as they like, paid at double the current statutory rate.
Make parental pay and leave rights available from the first day of work and extend them to self-employed parents.
Replace salary threshold with a more flexible merit-based system for work visas, ro address specific needs.
Reverse increase to income thresholds for family visas.

Childcare and education

Extend free school meals to all children in poverty, with longer-term plan to extend to all primary school children.
Review further education funding, including the option of exempting colleges from VAT.
Incorporate the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into UK law
Create new Lifelong Skills Grants, giving all adults £5,000 to spend on education and training throughout their lives, and aim to increase them to £10,000 in the future when the public finances allow.
Reinstate maintenance grants for disadvantaged students immediately to make sure that living costs are not a barrier to studying at university.
Make parental pay and leave rights available from the first day of work and extend them to self-employed parents.
Double statutory maternity and shared parental pay to £350 a week.
Increase paternity leave to 90% of earnings with a cap for high earners, alongside a 'use it or lose it' leave month for fathers and partners.
Make parental pay and leave rights available from the first day of work and extend them to self-employed parents.
Introduce paid neonatal care leave.
Longer-term plan to give families six weeks of 'use it or lose it' parental leave paid at 90% of earnings, and 46 weeks of parental leave shared between a couple as they like, paid at double the current statutory rate.

What would the Lib Dems' pledges cost?

The Liberal Democrats have estimated that these pledges will cost £26.8bn.

Funding would come from £26.9bn raised from tax pledges and other smaller policies. The Lib Dems anticipate around £7bn would come from tackling tax avoidance and evasion, plus just more £5bn from reforms to capital gains tax loopholes, and more than £4bn from increasing tax on bank profits.

Other savings come from measures including allowing asylum seekers to work after three months, a 'sewage tax' on water company profits, and increased Digital Services Tax on tech companies.