ukip.md

UKIP Manifesto

Economy and Democracy

• Replace the Barnett Formula with a funding formula based on need.
• UKIP will remove VAT from domestic energy bills.
• Scrap green levies.
• Abolish the TV licence over a 3 year period, and expect the BBC to retain a core free-to-air offering on Freeview, maintain the World Service and its local radio network.
• Remove VAT from hot takeaway food such as fish and chips, and from sanitary products.
• By the end of parliament, raise the personal allowance to at least £13,500.
• Raise the inheritance tax threshold to £500,000 per individual, and eventually eliminate inheritance tax all together.
• Cutting business rates by 20 per cent for 1.5 million British businesses which are operating from premises with a rateable value of less than £50,000.
• Freeze Air Passenger Duty at current levels, and when possible in the future seek to reduce it with the long-term objective of scrapping it completely.
• Strongly advocate for a proportional electoral system that makes seats match votes.
• Reserve the postal vote.
• Abolish the House of Lords.
• The size of the House of Commons will be halved to 325 directly elected members, according to a system of proportional representation.
• Pass legislation to allow a national referendum to be held every 2 years, on the issues gaining the highest numbers of signatures on approved petitions. The outcomes of these referenda would be legally binding and included in the Queen's Speech.

Infrastructure

• Scrap 'white elephant vanity' projects such as HS2.
• Push every local authority in the country to offer at least 30 minutes’ free parking in town centres and shopping parades.
• Amend planning legislation in order to make play spaces compulsory in housing estates, and to promote nursery or creche provision in developments such as shopping centres, office blocks, hospitals, airports, and railway stations.
• Scrap HS2 and invest in upgrading existing main line services to create additional capacity.
• Oppose the new Thames Crossing in Thurrock, and look to reopening a consultation for a new crossing further east.
• Support the installation of rapid charging stations in towns and cities.
• Stop mandatory fitment of the e-call vehicle tracking system on new cars.
• Exempt vehicles over 25 years old from Vehicle Excise Duty.

Industry

• Close the loophole allowing businesses to pay tax in whichever EU or associated country they choose.
• Create a new Coastal Towns Taskforce.
• Within coastal enterprise zones:
  • Businesses operating from premises with a rateable value of less that £50,000 will receive a 50% cut in business rates.
  • Local authorities will be given access to low interest government zones to buy up and renovate poor housing stock or empty commercial properties.
  • Local authorities can introduce minimum standards for properties in receipt of housing benefit.
• Resume Britain's 200-mile maritime exclusive economic zone.

Employment

• Raise the 40% income tax threshold to £55,000.
• Allow women to retire in a flexible state pension window at 60, if they so wish.
• No quarterly tax returns or increase in Class IV National Insurance or taxes for self-employed people.
• Bring forward legislation requiring employers to advertise jobs to British Citizens before they offer them overseas.
• Ensure employers are legally free to choose to hire a young unemployed British person under the age of 25 ahead of a better qualified or more experienced foreign applicant.
• Make Gordon Brown's British Jobs for British Workers plausible and
  meaningful in law.
• Abolish tuition fees for undergraduate STEM students, provided they work in their discipline and pay tax in the UK for at least 5 years after they complete their degree.
• Fund all secondary schools according to a single formula.
• Make first aid training a statutory requirement so pupils can obtain a Basic Life-Saving Diploma.
• Guarantee a job in the police service, prison service or border force for anyone who has served in the Armed Forces for a minimum of 12 years.
• Boots to Business policy to help ex-service personnel set up their own businesses by offering loans, grants, free professional advice and mentoring to any veteran who wishes to pursue an entrepreneurial career after leaving the forces.

Brexit

• Cease offering EU nationals student loans once we use the EU.
• Reduce from the Paris Climate Agreement and the EU Emissions Trading Scheme.
• Prosecute all cases of child and forced marriage and refuse permanent leave to remain and/or British Citizenship to any adult known to have procured a child marriage for themselves or their children.
• Send as many as possible of the 13,000 foreign nationals in our jails back to their countries of origin.
• Introduce a new UK Bill of Rights.
• End our financial contributions to the EU budget.
• Cut EU regulation from the 88% of the UK economy that is not linked to trade with EU countries.
• Prioritise free trade agreements with non-EU countries.
• Establish a Migration Control Commission.
• Set a target to reduce net migration to zero over a five year period.
• Place a moratorium on unskilled and low-skilled immigration for five years after we leave the EU.
• Oppose any form of military integration with the European Union.

Education and Childcare

• Make specialist counselling services available in all secondary schools.
• Introduce emotional health and wellbeing into the Ofsted inspection framework.
• Abolish Key Stage 1 SATs.
• Require every primary school to nominate a science leader.
• Open a grammar school in every town.
• Stop paying tuition fees for courses which do not lead to at least two thirds of students into a graduate level job.
• Extend the primary school day by offering wrap-around childcare from 8am to 6pm during term time.

Environment and Animal Cruelty

• Match fund grants made by local authorities for rural capital projects which enhance local environment or help recovery from environmental disasters.
• Ban the use of pair trawling for sea bass.
• Offer local referenda to overturn unpopular development approvals.
• Ban the export of animals for fattening and slaughter.
• Install CCTV in every abatoir.
• Forbid Jewish and Muslim methods of slaughter being carried out by unqualified individuals.
• Insist all meat labelling identifies the method of slaughter.
• Triple the maximum jail sentences for animal cruelty.
• Impose lifetime bans on owning and/or looking after animals on any individual or company convicted of animal cruelty.
• Repeal the 2008 Climate Change Act.
• Remove VAT from domestic fuel.
• Scrap green levies on household bills.
• Not allow drilling for shale in our national parks and other areas of outstanding natural beauty.

Housing

• Encourage the Buy British campaign.
• Establish a Housing Development Corporation to acquire primarily brownfield sites where affordable housing is required.
• Change planning law to enable the HDC to give themselves planning permission to build between 10 and 100 FBM homes on an average site.
• Identify long term dormant land held by central and local government and release it for affordable development.
• Enforce a law stating that veterans must be offered homes, and build 8 halfway house veterans' hostels, each with 200 rooms.
• Assign 500 affordable rent homes every year to ex-forces personnel.

Healthcare

• Provide NHS England with an additional £9 billion a year by 2021/22, with an additional £2 billion for social care.
• Lift the cap on medical school training places from 7,500 to 10,000.
• Cover the cost of medical students' tuition fees as long as they commit to working within the NHS for at least 10 our of the 15 years after they qualify.
• Fund the cost of 'return to practice' training, and encourage retired GPs or GPs with small children to work part-time or in job-share schemes.
• Increase the number of nurse training placements and reinstate funding for bursaries to cover nursing, midwifery and allied health professions' tuition and accommodation costs.
• Discontinue the 1% pay increase cap for frontline NHS workers earning less than £35,000.
• Establish a Department for Health and Care, along with a funded social care system assimilated to the NHS.
• Only British Citizens or foreign nationals who have paid UK taxes for at least 5 consecutive years will be eligible for non-urgent NHS care. Anybody else must provide evidence of comprehensive medical insurance before being allowed to enter Britain, and maintain that insurance for the duration of their stay,
• Create the equivalent of the General Medical Council for NHS managers.
• Limit the amount that can be spent on external management consultancy contract to £50,000.
• Guarantee the right to remain to EU nationals working in health and social care.
• Establish a Royal Commission.
• Scrap hospital care parking charges in England.
• Abolish the Care Quality Commission and implement a new inspection regime.
• Increase planned spending on mental health services by at least £500 million every year.
• Integrate mental health training into the teacher-training syllabus and develop a national school-based counselling strategy for England.

Security & Defense

• Make failure to report a known instance of FGM a criminal offence.
• Make FGM an indictable offence with a sentencing starting pointing of 6 years.
• Make 'breast-ironing' a specific criminal offence.
• Ensure that neither the legal nor the welfare system in Britain ever recognises polygamy.
• Ban wearing of the niqab or the burqa in public places.
• Immediately put special measures in schools found to be exposing children to Islamism.
• Give schools the right to dismiss forthwith any teachers, members of staff or governors found to be actively supporting radical mosques or imams.
• Train and deploy 20,000 more police and employ 7,000 more prison officers.
• Reinstate full Stop and Search powers to the police.
• Refuse admission to prisons to any imam, preacher or individual known to promote views contrary to British values.
• Repeal the 2003 Licensing Act and bring in new legislation to reduce the density of alcohol outlets and restrict trading times.
• Update licensing laws to limit the maximum stake on fixed-odds betting terminals to £2.
• Refuse to give prisoners the vote.
• Retain Britain's independent nuclear deterrent.
• Scale up defence by spending an additional £1 billion per year by the end of parliament.
• Create the role of Director of National Intelligence who will lead a single unified intelligence service.
• Commission, equip and staff a Naval Ocean-Going Surgical Hospital (NOSH).

Local Communities

• Exempt foodbanks and charity shops from charges imposed by local authorities to dispose of unwanted food waste and other goods.

Social Services and Security

• Integrate mental wellbeing monitoring into existing medical examinations for serving armed forces personnel in potentially traumatic or 'at risk' roles.
• Extend the period during which discharged service personnel are able to access the specialist DHMS scheme from six months to two years.
• Create a fund worth £80 million a year to help childminders and smaller childcare and smaller childcare providers employing 5 people or fewer.\
• Remove the current blanket ban on media reporting of placement and adoption proceedings and allowing journalists to report on such cases on the same basis as other family law proceedings.
• Maintain the Pensions Triple-Lock on the state pension, increasing it every year by the highest of inflation, average earnings, or 2.5%.
• Invest up to £2 billion every year into social care.
• Continue to pay Attendance Allowance for all people over the age of 65 who need help with personal care.
• Treble the amount allocated to dementia research and treatment in 2015.
• Fund a co-ordinating service for older and disabled people in every county to combat loneliness.
• Introduce a legally binding Dignity Code to improve the quality and standard of care for older people in hospital, care homes or their own home, and protect whistleblowers.
• Commit to giving carers an extra 5 days paid holiday each year, and increase
  Carer's Allowance from £62.70 per week to £73.10.
• Scrap the bedroom tax.
• Give tenants the right to request Housing Benefit is paid direct to their landlords, whatever benefit scheme they are on.

Diverse and Cultured Communities

• Establish a legal commission to draw up proposals to disband sharia councils.

Disabilities and Mental Health

• No cuts to disability benefits.
• Abolish the annual assessment process for continuing healthcare funding in respect of those suffering from a degenerative, terminal illness.

Foreign Policy

• Reduce foreign aid to 0.2 per cent of Gross National Income.
• A new international visa system with four principal visa categories:
  • Work Visas. Highly skilled workers with a job offer sponsored by companies paying them a minimum of £30,000 per annum will have priority.
  • Tourist and Visitor visas which covers those who come to Britain as tourists, to conduct business, or to see family. Valid for up to 12 months.
  • Student visas.
  • Family Reunion Visas. Foreign nationals marrying British citizens will have to prove the primary purpose of their marriage is not to obtain British residency.
• Abolish the European Economic Area Family Permit Scheme, and reinstate the primary purpose rule.
• All new migrants to Britain will be expected to make tax and national insurance contributions for at least five consecutive years before they become eligible to claim UK benefits, or access non-urgent NHS services, save for any exceptions stipulated by the Migration Control Commission.
• Those arriving on work visas may apply for British Citizenship after five years, provided they have worked and paid tax here, and maintained their medical insurance throughout that time.
• No amnesty for illegal immigrants.
• Foreign criminals will not be granted a visa to enter the UK.
• Migrants who commit crimes resulting in a custodial sentence will have their visa revoked and be detained until they are deported.
• Allow law-abiding EU citizens living in the UK before Article 50 was triggered the right to stay here indefinitely, and expect the same concession to be granted to British citizens living overseas within the EU.
• No benefits will be paid for any dependents living overseas when we leave the EU.
• Test the social attitudes of migration applicants to foster community cohesion and protect core British values.
• Close down the Department for International Development. A single Minister for Overseas Development working from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will administer aid.
• Repeal the law requiring us to spend 0.7% of our GNI on foreign aid, and reduce the aid budget to 0.2% of GNI over time.