7 REASONS

1. We will launch the biggest public house building programme for fifty years. We will create 50,000 public homes over the next five years, including 30,000 social houses, 5,000 homes with fair rent, and 15,000 genuinely affordable homes to buy. These will include some of the 26,000 empty homes, and empty flats above shops, across Wales that will be brought back into use.

 

2. We will create a £6bn Green Economic Stimulus which, together with our investments in healthcare, education, and the local economy, will generate up to 60,000 jobs over the five-year term. This programme of investment will support Wales’ ongoing economic recovery from the Covid-19 crisis and will reabsorb workers who have lost employment due to the Coronavirus pandemic. It will entail  investing in projects that will lay the foundations of a new resilient Wales, including expanding and electrifying the rail network, developing a sustainable Welsh food and farming system, and investing in decarbonisation.

 

3. We will extend Free School Meals to all primary school children by the end of our first term, beginning with all children in families who receive Universal Credit. These scheme will emphasise the development of local supply chains - supporting local farmers and local businesses, promoting sustainability, and children will learn where their food comes from and develop the habit of eating nutritious, locally produced food early in life.

 

4. We will have a five-year plan to recruit and educate an additional 4,000 nurses, 1,000 doctors, and 1,000 allied healthcare professionals such as physiotherapists and occupational therapists. Our workforce strategies will look to educate healthcare students in a way that provides the consultants and specialists we will need in twenty years.

 

5. We will provide good quality and safe green space within a five-minute walk of all Welsh households. The pandemic has highlighted more than ever the importance and value of access to green spaces – we will use the planning system to make natural green spaces available in people’s communities as a basic right, a necessity for our physical and mental health as well as for nature’s recovery.

 

6. We will reform council tax to make it fairer and more progressive, cutting the average household bill. We will undertake a revaluation to ensure that that council tax is more proportional to the value of properties - a more proportional council tax will narrow the gap in property wealth between owners of high and low value properties. We would expect that 20 per cent of households in the bottom fifth of income distribution will see their council tax bills fall by more than £200.

 

7. Plaid Cymru is the only party in the Senedd that has committed to an independence referendum. We believe that Westminster isn’t working for Wales, that we aren’t properly represented nor heard, and that Wales should be an independent nation that governs itself. Devolution can only take us so far, as demonstrated by the pandemic – with our own treasury, Wales could have started a Furlough scheme sooner, locked down sooner, and driven down cases sooner.