AN OPPORTUNITY FOR
YORKSHIRE OUR 2019 ELECTION MANIFESTO
for a stronger Yorkshire in a fairer United Kingdom
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An Opportunity for Yorkshire
Contents OUR VISION FOR YORKSHIRE 5 ECONOMY 6 EDUCATION 9 ENERGY 10 ENVIRONMENT 13 HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE 14 HOUSING 17 TRANSPORT 18 BREXIT 21 DEMOCRACY 22
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Photo: Bruce Rollinson | Yorkshire Post
Our Vision for Yorkshire A WELCOME FROM THE LEADER OF THE YORKSHIRE PARTY This year’s European elections are a real opportunity for Yorkshire. Despite 21st century technology making it easier to communicate than ever before, too many people have felt too disenfranchised for too long. We not only seek to change that, we have a genuine solution and a growing number of evidence-based policies that will help us have a positive impact on the lives of people living in Yorkshire. Our vision is ambitious and our vision is one of hope. We, the Yorkshire Party, believe changing the way the UK works is the best way to address the real issues people face every day – be they the state of the roads, overcrowded trains making commuting to work unreliable, or failures in our schools and hospitals. Ultimately, we must inspire people to believe things can be better; that they can be ambitious for themselves, their family, their friends and their community; that it is possible to build a Yorkshire of fairness and opportunity; and that they can be the ones to shape Yorkshire. We can make that difference. Together we can and will build a stronger Yorkshire in a fairer United Kingdom.
Chris Whitwood A MESSAGE FROM THE NO.2 MEP CANDIDATE We can’t continue with a policy of division, where remainers and leavers continually attack each other. We need to find a way to respect the vote to leave, whilst making sure businesses are not harmed. Theresa May’s deal does neither of those things. It represents a worst of all words, halfway house: neither in nor out, but with the worst bits of both. Working with Chris Whitwood in this election, I will be presenting a positive vision for the future of Yorkshire: a vision where we come together as a region to start to address issues that really affect our daily lives, like our schools, roads and hospitals.
Cllr. Mike Jordan Photo: Robbie MacDonald
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Economy ENABLING YORKSHIRE TO PROSPER The economy in Yorkshire is significantly underperforming. In 2017 our economy grew by only 1.2% – the second lowest rate of any region of the UK. Between 2018 and 2020 Yorkshire’s employment growth is expected to be almost non-existent, with recent estimates predicting a jobs growth rate of only 0.1% per year. To improve this the Yorkshire Party believes: • Public and private sectors must work together to enable the economy to thrive. Our vision is an inclusive one: where a dynamic and innovative private sector creates the jobs and growth our region needs, whilst a well-funded public sector delivers a universally accessible welfare state. • We must tackle inequality of opportunity and enhance social mobility, for example, through fairer education funding, to ensure that everyone within Yorkshire is given the tools to succeed in life. Too many people in Yorkshire do not have access to these tools, and have been left behind by successive governments. • The public sector can be well-funded only if the private sector is thriving and that private sector growth is best delivered with the support of a well-funded public sector. • Councils should work with local businesses to deliver the infrastructure they need and reinvest the proceeds of this growth in our public services.
To find out more, visit: www.yorkshireparty.org.uk/economy 6
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Education A FOUNDATION OF FAIRNESS AND OPPORTUNITY The aim of a 21st century education system must be to create engaged and empowered individuals, who know they have purpose and value. Education is the key to social mobility, equipping people with the skills, passion and ambition to improve themselves, their lives and the lives of those around them. Such a system must be founded on the basic principles of fairness and opportunity. To achieve this, our education policy will: • Depoliticise education policy making by placing policy development in the hands of practitioners through teacher-led commissions and a Yorkshire Education Challenge in order to stop education being used as a political football. • Demand fair funding for Yorkshire schools to address the regional disparity in education investment. • Devolve education to a Yorkshire Assembly with powers over taxation, expenditure and the ability to direct investment to areas of greatest need. • Establish a Yorkshire Education Challenge to provide governance, direction and guidance on the provision and conduct of all Yorkshire’s schools. The Yorkshire Education Challenge will be overseen by a teacher-led commission, with a small, fast-moving taskforce to connect existing middle tier structures and plug gaps, and understand the varied, specific needs of schools in Yorkshire. • Ensure ring-fenced funding for SEND and more able pupils to guarantee provision for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and advanced learning for gifted and talented pupils both in mainstream and specialist settings. • Increase investment to ensure additional school-based early years provision, particularly in areas of greatest need, to address fragmented provision across Yorkshire. • Foster grass-roots projects between schools, local businesses and a sustainable voluntary youth sector and champion successful community partnerships through the Yorkshire Challenge.
To find out more, visit: www.yorkshireparty.org.uk/education Yorkshire Party 2019 Election Manifesto
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Energy EMPOWERING YORKSHIRE Yorkshire is a significant energy producer within the UK and has an important energyintensive manufacturing sector. We support the development of an energy policy for Yorkshire that has at its core an ambitious target of renewable energy use and an innovative programme of low-carbon technology use. Yorkshire has a unique opportunity to champion community and individual microgeneration and the Yorkshire Party will encourage efficient energy use with smart distribution and storage. To achieve this, our policy will: • Ban fracking (hydraulic fracturing) and all other extreme methods of fossil fuel exploration and extraction everywhere in, on and under Yorkshire. • Encourage local, community and personal energy generation schemes through subsidies and grants to increase stakeholder responsibility and reduce reliance on ‘the big 6’ international generating companies. • Encourage the change to a Smart Grid, which is better suited to regional peak demand management, by investing in Yorkshire’s electrical infrastructure, updating physical and data management to make the system more efficient. • Introduce an urgent programme to make buildings less wasteful and extend building regulations to require a much higher energy efficiency, accounting for both the energy losses and the potential energy generation for each building. • Work with industry to optimise energy use, which will benefit not only industry but the county as a whole. • Reduce fuel poverty by making locally source energy more affordable and ensuring homes are more efficient. • Fund and establish research into new innovations in partnership with universities in Yorkshire, looking into how new technologies can lead to more efficient appliances, which in turn make better use of power sources saving energy.
To find out more, visit: www.yorkshireparty.org.uk/energy 10
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Environment ENSURING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE The Yorkshire Party stands for a better, more sustainable environment to make Yorkshire a happier and healthier place in which to live. The future of Yorkshire is for our children. The Yorkshire Party will place a high value on the environmental credentials of every policy, every action and every product. Successive governments have failed properly to account for the needs of Yorkshire’s important countryside communities. The Yorkshire Party will be a strong voice for our farmers and for all those who depend on a strong, sustainable and productive rural economy. To achieve this, our policy will: • Reduce single-use plastics by adopting a proactive approach to encourage manufacturers and retailers to consider the full life-cycle of the materials they use, including production and disposal or reuse. • Standardisation in waste collection, recycling and product labelling to encourage more recycling and the reuse of precious materials and ensure bestpractice is adopted across Yorkshire. • Place tighter controls on emissions from transport, generating plants, alongside a presumption against the construction of further energy-from-waste plants. • Champion the Yorkshire brand for all farming produce and will distribute agricultural subsidies to encourage a positive linkage between Yorkshire and the very best in healthy food which is managed in a sustainable way • Develop urban natural environments by encouraging communal vegetable plots, wildlife friendly gardens and community litter picks. • Establish a regional forestry commission with a target of planting a native tree for every resident of Yorkshire, every year.
To find out more, visit: www.yorkshireparty.org.uk/environment Yorkshire Party 2019 Election Manifesto
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Health and Social Care COMPASSION IN OUR COMMUNITIES We are proud of the principles upon which the NHS was founded – that people receive healthcare based on need, not on the ability to pay. Our NHS is too centralised and too distant. It is also plagued by short-term, top-down initiatives. Our social care systems are chronically underfunded. We believe these principles can be delivered only with increased funding to an NHS, led by the public sector. To address this, the Yorkshire Party believes: • Administration of our NHS should be devolved to Yorkshire – just as it is in Greater Manchester. • Advocate a properly funded, integrated Health and Social Care system, led by the public sector and supported, as appropriate, by properly qualified alternative providers. • Champion local community engagement at the heart of health and social care across Yorkshire. • Ensure high quality mental health provision and access across the region.
To find out more, visit: www.yorkshireparty.org.uk/health 14
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Housing BUILDING A YORKSHIRE FOR ALL Everyone has a right to a home. A stable place of safety and security is the basis upon which people can improve their lives and the lives of those around them enabling individuals to gain independence and develop a sense of identity, value and purpose within a wider community. To achieve this, our policy will: • Set a target for delivering 23,000 homes a year, of which 8,000 are available at social rent levels over 20-year period. • Protect Yorkshire’s greenbelts by encouraging construction on brownfield sites, ensuring new housing is accompanied by new infrastructure - more GPs, dentists, school places and better local transport. • Devolve housing investment and increase government investment through a Housing Investment Fund to meet the regional minimal target for social rented housing through new build, acquisition and the conversion of empty/obsolete buildings. • Introduce regional provision of private rented access schemes (help to rent) across Yorkshire, including a regional rent deposit guarantee scheme. • Introduce a new standard private rented tenancy with a three-year term period where the landlord could only give notice by using specified grounds, with limits on annual rent increases linked to an inflationary measure and abolishing renewal fees for tenants. ENDING HOMELESSNESS • Call for the repeal of the Vagrancy Act 1824 which criminalises rough sleeping and begging. • • Establish Housing First as the default option ensuring that all those without a safe place to stay are provided with emergency accommodation and to guarantee that people experiencing homelessness, particularly those with complex needs, are not excluded from registering for social housing. • • Create a Regional Reconnection Framework to work with councils across Yorkshire and the rest of the country in order to help people who are homeless regain connection to their local area, assuming in is safe to do so. This framework should outline minimum levels of support. To find out more, visit: www.yorkshireparty.org.uk/homelessness Yorkshire Party 2019 Election Manifesto
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Transport CONNECTING OUR REGION A high-quality, integrated transport network is crucial to a fully functioning economy. The rapid, easy and affordable movement of goods and people throughout the region is not only a key economic driver but also important to improving the quality of life for those living and working in Yorkshire. To achieve this, the Yorkshire Party believes: • A well-funded public sector, providing sustainable core services and world-class infrastructure, should be the backbone of an economically and environmentally network. • Transport investment should be devolved to Yorkshire to address chronic underinvestment in our roads and railways. • Demand fair rail fares, removing illogical rail fare boundaries that are costing the people of Yorkshire every time they travel. • Support local communities and other providers the flexibility to adapt creatively to meet the demands of travellers and businesses. • Tackle air pollution by encouraging the use of more environmentally friendly modes of transport.
To find out more, visit: www.yorkshireparty.org.uk/transport 18
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Brexit HEALING THE DIVIDE As this is a European election, Brexit is at the forefront of many people’s minds. The truth is though, when it comes to Brexit, your vote doesn’t matter. That’s because, whether you are remain or leave, politicians never really pay attention to the voters of the north of England The MEPs elected this year will not be the ones negotiating Brexit - that will be decided by Westminster. The profound failure of the Brexit negotiations demonstrates once more that Westminster politics is not working. Nevertheless, this election does offer the people of Yorkshire a voice. The Yorkshire Party is made up of people from both sides of the Brexit debate. Some of our members believed that the best way to build an open, positive, fair Yorkshire was to leave the EU and have many powers that were held at EU level devolved to Yorkshire. Some of our members valued the focus the EU brought to places such as Yorkshire through the Committee of the Regions and the Regional Development Fund. Regardless of your opinion on Brexit, Yorkshire’s schools are still chronically underfunded. Our health service is overstretched. Our region receives a pitiful tenth of the transport investment enjoyed by London. Areas of Yorkshire suffer the worst air pollution in England outside the capital. Yet these discussions are being drowned out. The Yorkshire Party provides a home for those on both sides of the Brexit debate, united by our desire to tackle the tangible issues that affect people’s everyday lives. Our members come from different perspectives but are united by the same goal – building a stronger and more prosperous Yorkshire in a fairer United Kingdom.
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Democracy RESTORING FAITH IN POLITICS Public faith in politics and politicians is at an all time low. Time after time London has decided what’s best for Yorkshire – and got it wrong. This has to change. People in Yorkshire themselves must set their own priorities and determine how their money is best spent. The Yorkshire Party aspires for better decision making closer to communities we seek to represent. • Establish a Yorkshire Assembly with meaningful powers to make decisions at a regional level. Only an Assembly can empower our residents and represent our diversity. • Support the principle of subsidiarity - where powers are exercised as close to the people as possible. We believe individuals and communities should not be prevented from achieving what they can accomplish by their own initiative. • Set a high standard for elected representatives. All Yorkshire Party candidates are bound, through our constitution, to abide by the Seven Principles of Public Life (also known as the Nolan Principles). THE SEVEN PRINCIPLES OF PUBLIC LIFE Selflessness – Holders of public office should act solely in terms of the public interest. Integrity – Holders of public office must avoid placing themselves under any obligation to people or organisations that might try inappropriately to influence them in their work. They should not act or take decisions to gain financial or other material benefits for themselves, their family, or their friends. They must declare and resolve any interests and relationships. Objectivity – Holders of public office must act and take decisions impartially, fairly and on merit, using the best evidence and without discrimination or bias. Accountability – Holders of public office are accountable to the public for their decisions and actions and must submit themselves to the scrutiny necessary to ensure this. Openness – Holders of public office should act and take decisions in an open and transparent manner. Information should not be withheld from the public unless there are clear and lawful reasons for so doing. Honesty – Holders of public office should be truthful. Leadership – Holders of public office should exhibit these principles in their own behaviour. They should actively promote and robustly support the principles and be willing to challenge poor behaviour wherever it occurs. 22
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