General Election Analysis: Plaid Cymru Manifesto

BASW Cymru's Communications & Public Affairs Officer, Steven Crane-Jenkins examines Plaid Cymru's mainfeso in depth, analysing what they're promising voters in Wales.

Plaid Cymru Manifesto

Plaid Cymru (Party of Wales) currently has three MPs in Wales (Arfon, Dwyfor Meirionnydd and Ceredigion), out of a possible 40 (this number reduces to 32 in the upcoming 2024 General Election due to boundary changes).  Even if Plaid Cymru won all the seats they are standing in, they would never have anywhere near enough MPs to form a UK Government.

Although favouring to become independent of the UK, the Party seeks more devolution in the interim, such as devolving policing and the railways, not listed below.  While much of their manifesto focusses on issues that are devolved to Wales, some of the areas highlighted would be dependent on more powers being devolved to Wales.  

A National Care Service for Wales

• Believe social care should be free at the point of use, ending the distinction between health and social care. 
• Support the John’s Campaign, which calls for the right of people to be supported by their family carers. 
• Provide clarity that it is a human right for family visits to care homes to support patients with dementia. 
• Committed to the consultation on the elimination of profit in children’s services provision, with the aim of expanding capacity in direct provision of both children’s services and adult services.
• Believe that restrictions on visas for care workers and dependents is counter-productive, given the need to recruit additional staff in the care sector. 
• Will pay social care workers at least £1 per hour above the Real Living Wage.

Mental Health 

• Transfer powers over the Mental Health Act away from Westminster. 
• They will put pressure on the Welsh Government to make necessary amendments to the Code of Practice in Wales. 

End of Life Support

• Support the review of the impact of recent changes to the Special Rules for Terminal Illness. 
• Extend statutory bereavement leave and pay entitlement of two to all people with a close relationship to a person who has died.

Neurodiversity

• Ensure immediate availability of support upon identification of neurodiversity, whether through referral or self-referral. They propose monitoring and customising support to meet the evolving needs of individuals throughout the diagnosis process.

Tackling Specific Conditions 

• Increase diagnostic tests within the community, informed by the work of the Community Diagnostic Vehicle in Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board. They cite audiology and diabetes as conditions where this would be explored. 
• Reduce diagnosis to Crohn’s and Colitis, coeliac disease, and IBS by implementing the national primary diagnostic pathway for lower gastrointestinal symptoms. 
• Deliver an improvement plan for lung health services. 

Public Heath 

• Move public health towards becoming a wellness service focused on keeping people healthy, advocating for a preventative public health strategy that rebalances resources to prevent illness and reduce unnecessary entry into the NHS system.
• Address health inequalities, including those based on class, race, and gender. They propose a review the financing model for Wales to better consider healthcare determinants and meet their needs.

Workforce 

• Plaid Cymru believe wage restoration pledges for NHS staff must be implemented promptly to show support and boost recruitment and retention.
• Restore funding for GPs to 8.7% of the Welsh health budget and recruit 500 additional GPs. This is a two-term pledge due to the time needed to recruit and train GPs. 
• Expand degree apprenticeships in healthcare to offer more opportunities for young people to enter the profession and remain in Wales.
• Eliminate profit from health care and reinvest into services. 
• Make nurses' contracts more flexible to accommodate part-time work and other responsibilities, with the aim of improving working contracts and recruiting more nurses.
• While acknowledging the value nursing and physician associates bring, they will ensure that their introduction does not reduce overall workforce expertise. Any new roles should be developed in full consultation with relevant trade unions. 

NHS Governance 

• Review NHS governance in Wales to strengthen oversight and accountability, focusing on streamlining targets, clarifying accountability, and recruiting managers with relevant expertise.
• Ensure that special measures of health boards accurately reflect health outcomes. They would support greater independent oversight of health board managers. 
• They would introduce a regulatory body for Senior Health Managers, ensuring accountability similar to medical staff regulated by bodies like the GMC.
• Establish a regulatory body for managers to improve patient safety and empower staff, ensuring decisions reflect candour, honesty, and integrity.

A Covid Inquiry for Wales

• Propose a Wales-specific Inquiry into Covid, arguing that the decisions of the Welsh Government and their impacts on Welsh civic society require detailed consideration beyond a UK-level Inquiry. They call for collaboration between the Welsh Government and UK Government to improve future preparedness.
• They will ensure that people with Long Covid receive appropriate support.

Community Pharmacies 

• Support a change in the legislation on drug tariffs in response to price increases in medications. 
• Support a review into the supply chain to ensure that patients get the medication that they need, when they need it. 

Welsh Language in healthcare 

• Continually develop Welsh Language services in healthcare, particularly mental health, to ensure that patients receive care in the language of their choice.

Welfare System Reform 

• Call for a Welsh Benefits System. This would entail the devolution of benefits that are aligned to existing devolved policy areas, such as health and housing. Additionally, the party is calling for the devolution of the administration of benefits, and the powers to create new benefits. They have argued that this would offer the opportunity for the introduction of new benefits, such as a Welsh Child Payment, which could provide further targeted support to families in poverty. 

Core Benefits 

• Support linking core benefits with inflation, to maintain current amounts without further penalising recipients, and stopping future governments from using benefits as a political football.
• They support an Essential Guarantee level of £120 each week for and individual and £200 for couples. 
• Review the provision of non-universal or automatic benefits to understand which can be made easier to access through auto-enrolment or through informational campaigns, as well as assisting advice organisations and local authorities to better promote these benefits to people who may be eligible. 
• Opposes proposed changes to the Work Capability Assessment and their ‘Back to Work’ plan. Instead, they are calling for the timetable for receipt of first payments of Universal Credit to be shortened so that individuals and families do not get into substantial debt. Additionally, repayments should operate on the basis of supporting people.

Support for Families with Children & Young People 

• Increase the roll-out of free school meals to also include Secondary Schools in Wales. 
• Increase child benefit by £20 per week for all children. They have stated that this will help 330,000 families and more than 550,000 children and young people who are eligible. 
• Scrap the ‘two-child’ limit on universal credit payments. 

Pensions

• Would retain the triple-lock pension increase. 
• Would increase the income tax personal allowance for pensioners in line with the triple lock.  

Housing Benefits 

• Retain the Local Housing Allowance at the 30th percentile of market rents in each Broad Market Rental Area. Furthermore, they have called for the devolution of the Broad Market Rental Area mechanism. 

Energy-related Benefits 

• Plaid Cymru would amend how Cold Weather Payments assessments are made. They have noted their concern that many vulnerable people may be missing out on these payments because the weather in their location is substantially different to the area being measured by the Met Office. 

Universal Basic Income 

Plaid Cymru support the principle of a universal basic income and will support pilots.

Homelessness 

• Seek to end homelessness by using the Housing First model and rapid rehousing. For Plaid Cymru, one of the key challenges is tackling long-term empty or unused property. However, their campaigning has helped increase council tax premiums on empty properties, which have funded grants to increase the supply of affordable homes. 

Social Housing

• Expand level of social and municipal housing stock, to ensure that the supply of housing meets Welsh community needs. They will deliver this through accessing a mixture of public and private funding streams and collaborate with communities across Wales, to ensure the correct mix of housing.

Planning and Delivering Homes 

• Furthermore, they have stated that they will factor in local community needs, for healthcare, education and transport, as well as ensuring sufficient green space and local play facilities. Meeting communities’ housing needs and increasing the housing stock will also reduce the numbers of individuals and families facing homelessness in Wales.

Nature and Climate emergency

• Support a science-led plan aligned with the Kunming-Montreal agreement to reverse nature loss. They advocate for biodiversity targets to halt the decline by 2030 and achieve recovery by 2050. Plaid Cymru insists on integrating climate and nature considerations in planning projects to avoid harming endangered species habitats.

Taxation

• The Senedd to have the powers to set income tax bands and thresholds
• Energy companies should be subject to an increased windfall tax
• Equalise capital gains tax with income tax,
• Crack down on tax evasion and avoidance, and abolish loopholes for non-doms.
• Scrap private school charitable status and charge VAT on fees and remove the exemption from business rates.
• Increase Air Passenger Duty and kerosene tax for private jets.

Increase the income tax personal allowance for pensioners in line with the triple lock.

Migration

• Scrap the Rwanda scheme, create safe and legal routes for asylum seekers to enter the UK and end the "no recourse to public funds" system.
• Wales and the UK remaining a member of the European Convention of Human Rights, being bound by the decisions of its associated court and upholding human rights.
• Retain the graduate route visa to encourage people to study, live and work in Wales.
• Devolve key immigration powers to Wales, including over the minority occupations list, allowing the Welsh government to issue its own visas.