The People’s Manifesto and Charter

There is no need for any cuts to public spending; no need to decimate public services; no need for unemployment or pay and pension cuts; no need for Austerity and privatisation. There is an alternative.

We need a government to reverse damaging austerity, and replace it with a new set of policies providing us with a fair, sustainable and secure future. We can no longer tolerate politicians looking out for themselves and for the rich and powerful. Our political representatives must start governing in the interests of the majority.

1. A fairer economy for a fairer Britain

• Consolidate all current banking institutions into a new publicly owned banking system.
• Makes long term investment in future technology and green production.
• Repudiate all the US and EU agreements that force open public services to private gain.
• Close tax loopholes and tax havens.
• Target the £120 billion of evaded and avoided tax by the super-rich.
• Increase tax on the super-rich and city of London.
• Take back control of interest rates and monetary policy from the Bank of England.

2. More and better jobs

• The government must protect existing jobs and intervene to ensure full employment.
• The Living Wage should be legislated as the new minimum wage.
• Ban zero hour contacts
• New technology and green production should guide general economic development.
• Financial support for collective and community-based enterprises to provide a different model to corporate domination.
• Introduce legislation to prevent closures and mass redundancies in profitable industries and the “export of jobs” to super-exploited markets abroad.
• Provide a commitment to the introduction of a maximum 35 hour week

3. High standard homes for all

• A new government needs a 2 part emergency plan to address the housing crisis.
  • a programme to build at least 250,000 new social homes a year (see 2011 census), refurbish existing housing stock and stop council home sales
  • to reform the private and public rented sector using rent controls and the implementation of national standards of accommodation and security of tenure.
• Expand community owned and managed social housing.
• Abolish the bedroom tax.
• End housing repossession evictions brought about by the effects of the recession, and establish rent controls in the private sector.

4. Protect and improve public services

• End all forms of privatisation and profit taking from public services.
• The people as a whole should own energy, post, telecommunications, water and transport companies – with profits ploughed back into investment.
• Restore the integrated management of the National Health Service, under democratic control, with cooperation rather than competition as the ethos of the NHS.

5. For fairness and justice

• Establish an agreed national proportion of not more than 5 to 1 between the size of top incomes and the median wage and salaries.
• Support the ‘Citizens initiative for an unconditional basic income.’
• Free Unions to act in defence of members’ rights and conditions, to bargain collectively and nationally in the fight against poverty, and to campaign for political, economic and social change.
• Disabled citizens must have automatic and autonomous access to the full rights of any other citizen, including access to work, transport etc.
• The overrepresentation of women among both the poor and the lowest paid must be treated as a national emergency.
• Equal pay for women must be enforced and testable.
• Child-care should be free at the point of need.
• Challenge all attempts to scapegoat immigrant workers for inequality, poverty or limits to public resources.
• All state benefits and pensions should be tied to inflation and start at Living Wage levels.
• Pension age should be fixed between unions and employers depending on the character of the job, with a maximum legal limit of 65.

6. For a secure and sustainable future

• Abolish student fees, and reinstate the Student Grant – Higher Education is essential for individuals and the future of Britain.
• Provide statutory funding for the youth service and adult/community education
• Public audit of all debt, canceling of the debt of the poor of the planet and getting rid of the debt economy in Britain and abroad.
• Serious financial regulation and a transaction tax of the international movement of capital and wealth by banks and corporations.
• Government must end the cost of war in blood and money.
• Bring the troops home.
• Scrap the Trident nuclear weapons programme.