The Senedd elections take place in just over a week and one of the key roles of the next Welsh Government will be guiding Wales’s economy out of the pandemic.
Covid has brought devastating economic impacts to sectors like hospitality and retail on top of the health tragedy.
The Welsh Government’s role over the next Senedd term will be to support the recovery as well as steer Wales to a greener economic future.
Here the parties spell out what they would do to get the North Wales economy moving.
Welsh Conservatives
• Welsh Conservatives will establish a National Mission to grow the economy, with a clear target to create 65,000 new jobs with government, businesses, and entrepreneurs all working together to play their part.
• When our National Mission has been achieved, we will cut the basic rate of income tax to support hardworking families across North Wales.
• Introduce a Covid bounce back package, which includes the establishment of a £2.5 billion Rebuild Wales Investment Fund and maintain the cut in VAT to 5% for tourism businesses until April 2022
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• Support new micro businesses with our “Jump Start Scheme” paying the employer National Insurance contributions of two new employees for two years to accelerate growth
• Establish “Innovate Wales”, based in North Wales, that will bring back the best of the WDA and serve as a one stop shop for firms.
• Create Business Rate Free Zones in North Wales by providing a 3-year business rate holiday for SME’s as part of our Covid Community Recovery Fund
• Stop Labour’s tax raids, including their Tourism Tax, Driving Tax and Employee Parking Tax
• Abolish business rates for small businesses and reform the outdated tax on growth
• Reverse the Welsh Government’s decision to block a Freeport in Wales, and establish one in Holyhead
• Level-up and join-up public transport in North Wales, delivering a North Wales Metro
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• Upgrade the A55 to address pinch points
• Improve rail links between North Wales and the North West of England
• Work with the 海角视频 Government to ensure cross border collaboration between North Wales and the North West of England
• Move the new Welsh Treasury and a reformed Welsh Development Agency to North Wales creating 200 new jobs
• Promote North Wales as a premier destination for international visitors
• Establish a North East Wales Institute of Technology
GREEN PARTY
Our ambitious Green New Deal and decarbonisation plans will be truly transformative delivering a just transition for a sustainable and resilient Wales, fit for future generations, creating tens of thousands of new Green jobs across Wales, and investing in carbon reducing infrastructure.
We believe that public spending to support the economy must prioritise new jobs for the climate and nature emergencies. Our Green Transformation Fund for Wales will raise the finance necessary for the urgent measures needed to tackle these twin crises.
We will ensure basic financial security for all by advocating for the immediate introduction of a Universal Basic Income (UBI). This directly shares prosperity across society, reduces inequality, boosts workers’ rights, and ends the toxic and costly benefits system that leaves so many trapped in poverty.
GWLAD
Gwlad is first and foremost a pro-business party. We realise that for Wales to prosper as an independent country it needs to have a thriving economy; and that can’t be achieved by having high taxes or intrusive government intervention at every turn.
Our philosophy is to ensure that the conditions exist for businesses to succeed – a good education system for both academic and vocational qualifications; adequate communications infrastructure (road, rail and digital); a simple, clear regulatory environment – and then to step back.
In particular, we will not subsidise overseas companies to locate low-value operations in Wales for the sake of creating jobs at any price, but will channel investment towards companies that are owned and managed in Wales, having their head offices here.
We will not channel the government’s resources to sustaining the bloated “third sector” – government funded charities and other non-profit organisations staffed with Labour party clients – that has been built up in Wales over twenty years of Labour party rule, and acts as a dead weight on the Welsh economy.
We will not continue Labour’s policies that positively encourage economically inactive people to move into Wales while pushing young people out of Wales – whether that be because of lack of employment opportunities, lack of affordable housing in their communities, or subsidising Welsh students to study in English universities.
Nevertheless we shall both build up and open up the Welsh universities to the outside world, by encouraging student exchange schemes with other universities elsewhere in the 海角视频 and overseas.
Our aspirations for a future independent Wales include abolishing Corporation Tax altogether and introducing a streamlined tax and benefit system combining a Flat Tax (a single percentage rate applied to all income, including income from dividends and hence replacing Corporation Tax) with a Citizens’ Income.
Welsh Labour
There is so much to be positive about in North Wales.
As the powerhouse of the Welsh economy, with talented people and one of the most stunning natural environments anywhere in the world, everything we need to create a bright future for North Wales lies right on the doorstep. Welsh Labour is ready to use those natural strengths to move North Wales Forward with a plan for new green jobs across the region on the road to net zero.
Welsh Labour will harness the natural environment of North Wales to create jobs through a new National Park in the Clwydian Range and Dee Valley; by creating a national forest that will stretch from North to South Wales and by making Wales a centre for new emerging renewable wave and tidal technology through a Tidal Lagoon Challenge.
We’ll support the world class strengths of the North Wales economy, like aerospace, to grow further through our Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre; we’ll help businesses in the region get the patient capital they need to expand and create jobs through our £500m Flexible Investment Fund and we’ll create new jobs on our High Streets in North Wales by using our ‘Town Centre First’ approach.
Welsh Labour will maximise our rich cultural strengths in North Wales in a plan for local jobs, including committing to a major redevelopment of Theatr Clwyd; establishing the Football Museum in Wrexham; developing plans for a Museum of North Wales and by supporting the slate landscape of North West Wales as a World Heritage Site.
We’ll build the infrastructure needed to support green jobs in North Wales including new low carbon social homes for rent – part of 20,000 across Wales - and by taking forward plans for a Metro in North Wales to support even more jobs and growth
Welsh Labour will give every young person in North Wales under 25 the guarantee of a job, or a place in education, training or help to start their own business.
Liberal Democrats
Our economy must support secure, well-paid work and good public services. We recognise that work is no longer a guaranteed route out of poverty and will redouble efforts to tackle poverty and deprivation in Wales.
For too long, plans for growth have ignored north and rural Wales.
Wales has a huge number of micro-businesses, and a small number of branch operations from inward investors which many jobs rely on. Wales needs to promote the growth of the stable, medium-sized companies to provide a strong backbone for our economy.
Liberal Democrats will put recovery first. We will:
■ Create a £500m fund to help our high streets, town and city centres, and support small businesses across Wales thrive and adapt.
■ Introduce a package of measures to boost incomes, create jobs - especially green jobs, and tackle poverty. Freeze business rates for the life of the next Senedd and in the long term, replace business rates with a fairer, more supportive system.
■ Introduce a Business Rate Investment Relief Fund – supporting businesses to invest, and targeting productivity and decarbonisation measures.
■ Reform rules to accelerate change of use applications for commercial premises and introduce a Community Right to Buy to bring empty shops in town centres, high streets, and city centres back into use.
■ Invest in broadband and mobile phone connectivity, including providing training and support.
■ Establish a Job Creation Premium, offsetting the initial costs of recruitment and training for businesses looking to grow.
■ Make Holyhead a regional hub for renewable energy and hydrogen production, creating new, long-term jobs and opportunities for local businesses.
■ Invest in cross border transport to important towns and cities.
Plaid Cymru
A Plaid Cymru Government will not leave any region of Wales behind. Prosperity Wales, our new all-Wales economic development agency, will be charged with overseeing development strategies for Clwyd, Powys, Swansea Bay and the South-East.
Considerations for the development of Clwyd include its core economic role and identity is manufacturing, moving into green technology; it should become seen as a ‘Workshop of Wales’, with key anchor firms such as Airbus. Wrexham will become the financial capital of Wales, plus developing as a film and television cultural hub, linking Glyndwr University, Creative Wales, the British Film Commission, and the county council.
Towns like Wrexham, Ruthin, Denbigh and Corwen will be promoted as centres of the Welsh language cultural scene, with a regional focus for a youthful urban experience which is vital for the future of the Welsh language, and Mostyn will be developed as a deep-water port specialising in offshore energy and tidal lagoon maintenance in the Dee Estuary and Colwyn Bay.
Plaid Cymru has also devised its Arfor strategy, which entails the creation of three new eco-centres as extensions of existing settlements including on the Menai Strait between Bangor and Caernarfon. They will be vibrant employment, leisure, cultural and entertainment hubs serving their rural hinterlands and connected by a western coast rail link between Bangor and Carmarthen. There will be hubs for the creation of new, high quality jobs in innovation and health sciences linked to their universities and local hospitals, in the environmental and creative industries, and in social enterprises.
Other steps that Plaid will take that will benefit the north Wales economy include expanding and electrifying the rail network, building the facilities for Wales to become a world leader in offshore wind, grow Welsh ownership of the renewable sector, more local ownership of the Welsh economy.
Propel
Propel’s Contract With Wales will end lockdowns for good. The Welsh Government’s own statistics and reports tell us that prolonged lockdowns create greater inequality and do permanent harm. The alleged benefits of lockdown, are outweighed by the costs.
Propel will give business in the North confidence to get back on its own two feet.
Propel is proposing the New Welsh Economy Act, with a Welsh Stock Exchange. We will create a network of regional community cooperative banks with a primary focus of investing in existing and new small and medium-sized local businesses. Propel will reindustrialise Wales for the 21st Century through developing high-tech, sustainable manufacturing for export. A new public procurement strategy will be adopted to move towards 100% of public spending being awarded to Welsh companies. This will create in excess of 100,000 jobs.
Propel is proposing an Energy Independence Act, establishing a publicly owned Welsh national energy company, for conventional extraction of Wales’ known gas reserves in former coal fields in order to replace use of foreign, imported gas. Cheaper energy supply will support local employment in key strategic industries. The billions of pounds of revenue generated will be used to create a Sovereign Wealth Fund and to achieve long-term energy independence through investment in renewable energy. Welsh universities will become world leaders in carbon capture and storage technology.
Propel’s Planning for Wales Act will establish Rural Development Boards. We will upgrade Wales’ strategic road network to expressway standard, including a North-South National Expressway. We will also reinstate the Afon Wen to Bangor railway line.
Wales has stagnated for too long. It is time to propel Wales forward.
Reform Party
We must become a low tax, smartly regulated, high growth economy. Faster growth is the only way to better wages and more tax revenues to invest in better healthcare and other public services.
■ Raise the threshold at which people start paying income tax to £20,000.
■ Free up 1.2 million small businesses and self-employed from paying corporation tax.
■ Create an internet sales tax and scrap business rates in Wales.
■ Stimulate the North Wales economy by supporting Wylfa Newydd.
海角视频IP
■ Cutting VAT on alcohol sold in licensed premises to zero,
■ Freezing business rates at zero for at least 12 months,
■ Creating a £100m refurbishment fund for the Welsh tourism industry
■ Designating tax free zones and freeports across Wales to attract investments and jobs.