Economic Growth & Industry

The UK economy has potential to generate far more jobs and activity. The approach taken will be to end unfair electricity pricing, expand industry like manufacturing and aviation, distribute growth regionally, and become self-sufficient and abundant. The policies to achieve this are:

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• Changing the electricity pricing system from marginal pricing to reflective pricing by expanding CfDs using Ofgem.

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• Streamline automatic approvals for the construction of sustainable energy infrastructure with viable planning to ensure grid connections.

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• End taxpayer-funded bailouts for private water companies, stop arranging emergency funding, and enforce regulations strictly.

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• Direct private and public investment in manufacturing capacity to capitalise on newly cheap electricity prices.

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• Prioritise critical sectors like semiconductors, aerospace, and pharmaceuticals.

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• Expand airports to grow the UK as an air traffic hub, giving more options to travel as well as boosting the aviation industry.

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• Expand international student visas subject to housing availability. International students bring high levels of tuition fees and spending into the economy, better funding research.

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• Offer free street trading licenses to reduce friction in entrepreneurship and put downward pressure on commercial rents.

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• Registration of new worker-owned businesses to be free of cost, frictionless, and timely.

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• Implementing a regional growth model where each region has a specialist industry.

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• Offer professional qualifications like the Care Certificate and CSCS (construction card) free of charge to boost supply of skilled workers.

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• Equalise CGT and dividends tax with income tax. Passive income should not have favourable tax treatment over going out for a hard day of work.

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• Equate asset loans to income for tax purposes. Wealthy people avoid paying their share of tax by taking out loans against their assets rather than selling them to have untaxed cash flow.

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• Encourage greenfield investment in new productive assets and restrict acquisition of existing productive assets by private corporations.

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• Transfer UK-registered, UK-owned private unlisted businesses from shareholder ownership to worker ownership based on payrolls, excluding businesses subject to BITs to avoid international arbitration based on the principle that private unlisted illiquid shares have no market value and on the justification that amendment of the articles of association can be justified by company benefit (worker-owned businesses would have 0% corporate tax and 0% NICs).

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• Reducing the friction in creating worker co-operatives and the conversion of companies into co-operatives through lowering registration costs and giving workers a first right to raise capital to acquire a company when it is being sold, with favourable tax treatment for sellers if a company is sold to become a co-operative. Worker co-operatives to be the default business registration model.

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• Mandate Employee Ownership Trusts for every publicly listed company, using corporate tax flow to buy shares on behalf of workers.

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• Mandate 50% worker representative seats on boards of directors at publicly listed companies, with a unanimously elected independent chair to act as a tie-breaker.

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• End speculative lending and non-essential consumer credit.

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• Investment in the abundance of essentials e.g. renewables and nuclear energy, desalination, water recycling, reservoirs, modern methods of construction, vertical farming, and local 3D printing plants to provide local access to consumer products.

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