After the Prime Minister’s appeal for ideas to bring growth, Real Britain columnist Ros Wynne-Jones offers 25 ways Labour can reform the country and make things feel better again
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has written to the UK’s main regulators asking for inspiration on how to grow the economy. New ideas are desperately needed.
As the PM faces down the consequences of 14 years of austerity – from overflowing prisons and sewage dumped in rivers to the now annual NHS winter crisis – this is a make-or-break five months leading to the May 1 local elections.
It’s not just that things need to get better, they need to feel better too. So here are 25 bold ideas that can inject real hope for a brighter Britain.
1 Pop-up dental clinics sorting the nation’s teeth. See Lancashire lad Stan Brock’s Remote Area Medical in the US for inspiration, but make it state-funded. Pioneer use of remote consultations to get things moving.
2 Mobile mental health units with specialists to treat under-25s.
3 Knee-ting-gale Hospitals – a reinvented Nightingale Hospital model to get the backlog of hip and knee replacement ops tackled urgently, with supported recovery beds.
4 Get social care sorted once and for all. The country will only feel like it is working when the NHS works. And the NHS won’t work until social care is fixed. Start with fixing the staffing crisis with better pay, and a national care body.
5 Create a Citizens Assembly on Immigration. The debate is now too poisoned to continue. Stop playing catch-up with toxic Tory rhetoric and craft your own story around compassionate-but-fair Labour values. Open a safer process so people can apply for asylum from abroad instead of getting into dinghies.
6 Set up a Fairness Fund to support communities that have seen a high level of rapid immigration, to make sure everyone has access to the infrastructure they need (GPs, school places, shops) and feel safe and valued.
7 Make peace with Britain’s pensioners urgently before the country freezes. Apologise for how reforms to the winter fuel allowance were handled, and for the betrayal of WASPI women, and set out a New Deal for Older People so they can grow old safely and with dignity.
8 The Chancellor has said every penny of the £1.7billion they’ve saved from ending tax breaks enjoyed by private schools will go to state schools. The next step is to make that money visible, and involve teachers and parents in how it is spent. Don’t leave out universities from reform – our academic institutions are being destroyed by a collision of free-marketeering and austerity.
9 Free school meals. This will make a tangible difference to millions of families and is the most powerful mechanism for tackling inequality. Timidity is not working – be bold with 4.3 million children living in poverty in our wealthy country. Hungry kids can’t learn.
10 End the two-child benefit cap. Don’t stand to the right of Reform on this huge issue. This is a Labour government, let it be Labour– and deny Farage the fake moral high ground. Stop using Tory language on welfare and stand up for disabled people. This is your government. Let this be the year of the carrot, not the stick.
11 Create a standalone Communities Minister who sits in the cabinet. Last summer’s riots are evidence enough that years of demonising rhetoric and austerity has left parts of our country bitterly divided. A great job for a backbencher like Kim Leadbeater, who understands the terrible consequences of division.
12 Give anti-corruption champion Margaret Hodge all the powers and money she needs to ferret out the lost £350billion – but a Disinformation Czar is also urgently needed. People like Sarah Armstrong-Smith, chief security Adviser for Microsoft, or former Danish PM turned chair of Facebook oversight board, Helle Thorning Schmidt, could fit the bill.
13 Lords Reform – use the House of Citizens model created by 858.org.uk to fill one third of the seats with ordinary citizens, as with jury service. This would be a genuine revolution. If incumbency is a political problem, fight it with radical change.
14 Tell a better story about reforms to farming. Two people who jointly own a farm will still be able to pass on land and property valued up to £3million to a child or grandchild, tax free. Unlike the rest of us. This is a tiny part of the picture – our food chain is in crisis. We need root and branch reforms that prioritise healthy, affordable food and sustainable environmental practices.
15 Give asylum seekers the right to work while they wait for their asylum claim, ending the need for hotels or welfare. This will bring savings for the taxpayer while restoring dignity to people’s lives.
16 Tackle the special educational needs (SEN) crisis keeping kids out of school. Why is the country not working? Thousands of parents are having to educate their own children. More than 1.6 million pupils in England alone have special educational needs.
17 A public health response to the drug and addiction crisis facing the country. Get treatment programmes working. Get Britain well again. End the cycle of poverty, poor mental health and addiction.
18 The knife crime epidemic is really a crisis of poverty and public health. Tackle it at its roots to help young people feel safe again. Reopen tens of thousands of youth clubs. Give young people a future.
19 Bring in a Rights of Nature Act giving legal recognition to nature. Future generations will judge this government on the actions it took on the climate emergency. One day soon, this will be the only measurement of whether your government mattered.
20 Take the water companies back into public ownership. End of.
21 Tackle the tech giants. Elon Musk’s tentacles are ever more tangled up in our political future. We fail to regulate now at our peril.
22 Levelling Up was the right diagnosis by Cummings & Co, but the medicine was a placebo. Open a genuine Communities Fund that rewards the incredible work happening at grassroots level and gives people control and agency.
23 Wealth taxes. This is a Labour government. Let those with the greatest shoulders bear the greatest burden. Be the tide that floats all boats. What’s the point of that mountainous majority otherwise?
24 Turbo Green Jobs Zones benefitting those communities that lost most from the collapse of mining and other heavy industry. Skills academies for places like Port Talbot, Whitehaven, Bradford, Stoke, Blackpool, Barnsley. Begin reindustrialisation. Bring back hope.
25 Commission artists to write a story of our national identity – Dear England playwright James Graham would be the perfect choice to lead the project. For too long, patriotic ideas have been dominated by the Tory right and the Far Right. There’s another story to tell. Let’s start telling it.