General Election: The party pledges that could change UK engineering

With just two weeks until polling day, the major political parties have set out their visions for the nation’s future.

From housebuilding to HS2, tidal energy to training, each manifesto touches on areas that could influence engineering in the UK for decades to come. Here are five of the key promises from each of the main parties.

Labour

• Set up Great British Energy, a publicly owned clean power company, paid for by a windfall tax on oil and gas giants. Labour said it would work with the private sector to double onshore wind, triple solar power, and quadruple offshore wind by 2030.
• “Put passengers at the heart of the rail service” by reforming the railways and bringing them into public ownership.
• Reform planning to build 1.5m new homes, and to “forge ahead with new roads, railways, reservoirs, and other nationally significant infrastructure.”
• A “phased and responsible” transition in the North Sea. Oil and gas production in the North Sea “will be with us for decades to come”, Labour said, and would be managed in a way that does not jeopardise jobs. The party would not issue new licences to explore new fields, however.
• Establish a National Wealth Fund with £7.3bn over the next parliament. This would allocate £1.5bn for new automotive gigafactories, £2.5bn to “rebuild our steel industry”, £1bn to accelerate the deployment of carbon capture, and £500m to support manufacturing of green hydrogen.

Conservatives

• Ensure annual licensing rounds for oil and gas production from the North Sea. The party also said it would open new gas power stations to back up renewables.
• Fund 100,000 “high-quality” apprenticeships for young people, paid for by curbing “poor-quality university degrees that leave young people worse off”.
• Approve two new fleets of Small Modular Reactors to “rapidly expand nuclear power” within the first 100 days of the next parliament.
• Reverse the ULEZ expansion in London and apply local referendums to new 20mph zones and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods.
• Implement a new import carbon pricing mechanism by 2027 to “ensure that imports of iron, steel, aluminium, ceramics and cement from countries with a lower or no carbon price will face a comparable carbon price to those goods produced in the UK”. This would reduce the risk of industry being displaced to other countries that are not taking action on climate change, the manifesto said.

Reform UK

• Scrap energy levies and Net Zero to “slash energy bills and save each household £500 per year”.
• Fast-track licences of North Sea oil and gas. The party said it would also grant shale gas licences on test sites for two years, and enable major production “when safety is proven”, with local compensation schemes.
• Increase and incentivise ethical UK lithium mining for electric batteries, combined cycle gas turbines, clean synthetic fuel and tidal power. Other ambitions include exploration of “clean coal mining”.
• “Incentivise innovation to speed up building.” Approaches would include modular construction, digital technology and building sites that improve efficiency and cut waste.
• Scrap HS2. The party hopes to save £25bn by “scrapping the rest of this bloated vanity project”.

Liberal Democrats

• Make homes warmer and cheaper to heat with a 10-year “emergency upgrade programme”, with free insulation and heat pumps for people on low incomes. The party also aims for all new homes to be zero-carbon.
• Invest in renewable power so that 90% of the UK’s electricity is generated from renewables by 2030.
• Require all large companies listed on UK stock exchanges to set targets consistent with achieving the country’s net zero goal, and to report on their progress.
• Remove “unnecessary” restrictions on new solar and wind power, and support investment and innovation in tidal and wave power “in particular”.
• Review the cancellation of the northern leg of HS2 to “see if it can still be delivered in a way that provides value for money, including by encouraging private investment, or if an alternative is viable”.

The Green Party

• End the “de-facto ban on onshore wind”. Along with transformation of the planning system, the party said this would support a “massive increase” in wind power.
• Require all new-build homes to maximise use of solar panels and heat pumps, or equivalent low-carbon technologies. All planning applications would be required to include whole-life carbon and energy calculations.
• Introduce a carbon tax on all fossil fuels, whether produced in the UK or imported. The tax would be proportional to the greenhouse gas emissions produced when fuel is burned.
• Cease development of new nuclear power stations, “as nuclear energy is much more expensive and slower to develop than renewables”. The manifesto added: “We are clear that nuclear is a distraction from developing renewable energy and the risk to nuclear power stations from extreme climate events is rising fast.”
• Push the next government to establish an Offshore Energy and Skills Passport, “so that workers can transition more easily between offshore energy industries”.

SNP

• Demand devolution of powers over energy regulation, pricing and production to ensure that natural energy resources are used to “best serve the needs of the Scottish people”.
• Scrap Trident and invest the money into “conventional defence” and public services.
• Work at pace with the Acorn Project and Scottish Cluster to secure the fastest possible deployment of the project, following what the party called the “UK government’s failure to support the Acorn carbon capture, utilisation and storage project at track 1.”
• Take an “evidence-based approach” to oil and gas. “We believe any further extraction must be consistent with our climate obligations and take due account of energy security,” the manifesto said.
• Promote Scotland’s hydrogen export potential. Scotland is “well placed to supply significant amounts of hydrogen to continental Europe”, the party said, and its MPs would press for the UK government to secure progress with direct interconnection between Scotland and the continent.

Plaid Cymru

• Secure the “£4bn owed to Wales from HS2”. This extra funding would be invested in improving Welsh public transport, including “properly connecting north and south Wales for the first time”, and electrifying the North Wales Main Line.
• Oppose Tata’s plans for the closure of its blast furnaces in Port Talbot. The UK government should look to nationalise the steelworks, the party said.  Future options for “greening” steel production – including replacing coal with green hydrogen – could also be explored.
• Create a Welsh Green New Deal. This would provide “rewarding, meaningful and fair work in the emerging green and net-zero sector, and includes re-skilling and supporting Welsh employees and apprentices into these sectors”.
• Wales should have full control over energy powers.
• A long-term plan for retrofitting existing properties, making them “more energy efficient, thereby reducing costs and carbon emissions”.

Want the best engineering stories delivered straight to your inbox? The Professional Engineering newsletter gives you vital updates on the most cutting-edge engineering and exciting new job opportunities. To sign up, click here.

Content published by Professional Engineering does not necessarily represent the views of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.