The Liberal Democrats have revealed the party’s priorities for the upcoming election.
Ahead of the General Election 2024 on 4 July, the Liberal Democrats published its manifesto, with a huge focus on staffing and business but little on retail crime.
Its most retail crime-centric ambition is to scrap the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) role and replace it with local Police Boards made up of councillors and representatives from relevant local groups, while investing the savings in frontline policing. It also wants to create a national recruitment, training and retention strategy to tackle the shortage of detectives.
The party’s policies focused on public health including the introduction of regulations to halt the use of vapes by children while recognising their role in smoking cessation for adults, and banning the sale of single-use vapes; the introduction of a new levy on tobacco company profits to help fund healthcare and smoking cessation services and extending the soft drinks levy to juice-based and milk-based drinks that are high in added sugar.
It also intends to introduce a deposit return scheme for food and drink bottles and containers, working with the devolved administrations to ensure consistency across the UK, learning the lessons from the difficulties with the Scottish scheme.
Other policies include the establishment of an independent review to recommend a genuine living wage across all sectors; replacing the Business Rates System with a Commercial Landowner Levy to reduce the financial burden on high street business and encourage investment in local retail areas and the introduction of a national financial inclusion strategy to protect access to cash in remote areas and expand banking hubs.
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