Restoring the foundations
A nation cannot renew itself if it cannot govern itself. These papers restore equality before the law, the confidence of the national culture and return power to those that are accountable for it.
§ 01Restoration and Renewal: Equality, Merit and the National Inheritance
Equality before the law is restored as the governing principle of public life. The Equality Act 2010 is repealed and replaced with a narrower non-discrimination code that protects individuals rather than groups and keeps practical protections for disabled people. Preferences based on identity are prohibited in selection, in public procurement and in charitable and private awards. The state ends its backing for demographic targets, compulsory pay-gap reporting by demographic group and workforce equality standards in the NHS. Regulators are confined to their statutory functions. Equal pay returns to the Equal Pay Act 1970, which covers like work and work rated as equivalent under an employer’s own job evaluation scheme. The Equality and Human Rights Commission is abolished and employment conciliation is reformed.
Britain withdraws from the European Convention on Human Rights and repeals the Human Rights Act. The interpretations and administrative rules inherited from them are settled, common law remedies are retained and the Northern Ireland settlement is preserved. Judges are appointed on merit alone. In policing, identity-specific criminal aggravation is removed, standards and accountability are reset and the state stops treating communal organisations as representatives of the people they claim to speak for.
Schools teach a coherent national entitlement, supported by commissioned teaching resources and a national framework for religious education. Pupils are taught biological sex and protected from social transition, and common school practices and artistic accomplishment are restored. Funding for Christian schools is retained while state funding for other denominational schools ends. Universities and research funding are freed from identity targets. Public cultural spending is given a common purpose, the BBC Charter is renewed around impartiality and national purpose and churches, monuments and Christian heritage are protected. Civic institutions are given durable access to premises.
One law and one public life apply to everyone. English becomes the language of public administration, faces must be visible in public and common procedures apply in public institutions. Religious civil adjudication ends, future marriages between first cousins are prohibited and domestic religious slaughter ends, with restricted imports licensed. Free speech is protected by a principle that the law protects people rather than beliefs. A single threshold for criminal expression is set and offences that reach beyond it are repealed. The regulatory regime of the Online Safety Act is repealed and lawful speech is protected in universities and at work.
Elections return to voting in person. Postal votes are kept only for the armed forces, Crown servants overseas and electors certified as unable to leave home, and everyone else who cannot attend may appoint a proxy on stated grounds, as under the 1985 rules. The franchise is confined to British and Irish citizens aged 21 and over, and British citizens abroad keep the vote for five years after leaving.
§ 02Unlocking the Power to Govern: Ending the veto state
Three papers return authority to those who can be held responsible for it. The first restores the constitutional settlement in the courts. The Supreme Court is abolished and the Appellate Committee is restored and reconstituted as the final court. The Constitutional Reform Act is repealed, the office of Lord Chancellor is restored and senior judges are confirmed in Parliament. Judicial review is returned to its purpose of holding decisions to the law. Standing is narrowed, litigation funding must be disclosed and the grounds of review are confined. Statutory interpretation is restored, ouster clauses are given effect, the boundary of justiciability is reinstated and interim relief is limited, with overreaching rulings reversed. The immigration and asylum tribunals are reconstituted. A statutory code of judicial conduct requires declaration and recusal, removal becomes a power of the House of Commons and a time-limited review examines judicial conduct. Sentencing guidelines are brought under parliamentary control.
The second classifies every public function and every arm's-length body by what it does, and requires every public power to have a legal source, a named holder and a line of accountability. Bodies that deliver services return to ministerial control. Each regulator is given an ordered mandate, with strategic direction set through Parliament and stronger accountability for the use of its powers. Advisory bodies are confined to advice and statutory consultees become advisers rather than vetoes, while the functions that must remain independent are protected. Every body is reviewed every ten years, a new power allows bodies to be restructured and their performance is published, scrutinised and acted upon.
The third ends the use of charitable status for political campaigning. A dominant political purpose becomes incompatible with charitable status, campaigning spending loses tax relief and the charitable purposes most open to political use are narrowed, with transition arrangements that protect charitable assets. Public money given to charities is confined to defined charitable outputs and conflicts of interest are mapped across government. Charities must publish their grants and regrants, report their political activity, declare their funding when they give evidence to consultations and publish all foreign funding. Transfers from charities to non-charities are restricted. The Charity Commission becomes more accountable to Parliament and gains the funding and powers to enforce the rules.
§ 03UK Build Reform
Nationally important infrastructure is given one accountable route from decision to operation through six connected reforms. Ministers designate National Infrastructure Corridors and Energy and Industry Zones after a published assessment of need, and designation settles the strategic questions of need and location once, with binding principles for consent and a defined window for challenge. A strategic environmental assessment for each corridor or zone deals with shared effects once, and its evidence can be relied upon by every project within it. Environmental Delivery Plans with published tariffs allow developers to discharge their obligations to protected sites and species precisely, while funding the conservation those obligations require. Standard assessments for repeatable assets and integrated permits replace the chain of separate approvals, and decisions that run past their deadline transfer automatically to a national decision-maker. Legal challenges are heard early in a dedicated infrastructure list with specialist judges, and remedies are proportionate to the flaw found. Communities that host infrastructure receive benefits set out in a published tariff before consent is decided, so that compensation follows the effects people bear rather than their ability to threaten delay.
§ 04The Civil Service: Machinery that answers
The Cabinet Office is abolished and replaced by a Department of the Prime Minister and a Department of the Civil Service, and every department receives a published charter letter. Ministers appoint permanent secretaries on fixed terms, as in Australia, and directors general from fields that include outside candidates, with a small office of outside experts alongside them. Senior officials work to objectives that follow from the charter letter and can be removed if they fail. Every department publishes a costed audit of its functions, and functions with no current purpose stop recruiting so that non-frontline numbers fall as people leave, with the 2016 level as an indicative ceiling. Advisory lawyers return to departments, advice that a policy is unlawful is signed, graded and shown to ministers in full and the guidance on legal risk is approved by Parliament. No staff network may act as an interest group inside government, the service's purpose of serving the long-term interests of the United Kingdom is written into law with a stewardship test for major decisions and new civil servants must be British or Irish citizens.
The productive engine
Prosperity depends on cheap energy, capital that invests at home, people with the right skills and industries that make things.
§ 05Energy
The energy papers set out a programme for dependable electricity that households can afford and industry can use to expand. The national climate targets and carbon-budget duties are repealed and replaced with objectives of affordability, dependable supply, industrial capacity and sovereign control. The UK Emissions Trading Scheme is replaced with a fixed carbon tax of £10 per tonne, the UK carbon border adjustment mechanism is abolished from the start of year two and the mandates on vehicle sales and boiler replacement are removed.
The electricity system is planned and purchased as a whole. The National Energy System Operator is given a binding rolling plan of ten to fifteen years, and a separate central purchaser buys default energy, hedging and reliability services, while operational markets and independent dispatch are preserved. Private concessions then compete to serve customers on billing, service and flexibility. New nuclear, coal and selected gas generation are built through an independent, British-controlled and asset-locked mutual, with the first nuclear proving builds funded publicly and repeat nuclear prioritised as evidence permits.
Investment in domestic fuel is restored. North Sea exploration and development reopen under ordinary corporation tax with usable investment relief, private shale appraisal resumes alongside university and industry research and a commercial route reopens for domestic coal mining. Approved infrastructure is made deliverable through the build reforms above, a Cabinet delivery minister and a golden share protecting national transmission, with new demand connections released in step with dependable supply. Contracts already signed are honoured, but the cost of inherited renewable subsidies comes off the price of each unit of electricity and is recovered through a fixed, banded charge, with industry exempt and its share funded from taxation. Routine subsidies for particular technologies end from year one.
§ 06Capital for Britain
British savings should build Britain. Banks are freed to lend to business by abolishing ring-fencing, reforming the leverage ratio, abolishing the bank levy and the bank surcharge and implementing international capital standards no further and no faster than the United States. A dormant brake, held in reserve, can stop the new lending flowing back into mortgages on existing homes.
Tax relief on savings is reserved for investment in Britain. Pension tax relief becomes conditional on an allocation to UK growth assets, with legal protection for trustees and providers who invest in Britain, and ISA relief is confined to UK assets. A dividend tax credit is restored for pension funds, capital gains tax is removed from long-term holdings of London-listed shares and from sales of private companies to British owners and the venture capital reliefs are made permanent.
Listing and owning British companies is made easier. Stamp duty on shares is abolished, the sunset on dual class shares is removed, long-term shareholders may be given loyalty votes and company reporting is confined to what investors need. Ordinary investors are allowed to trade on private share markets. The consolidation of pension funds is accelerated so that they are large enough to invest directly, a public consolidator takes on closed final salary schemes and the matching adjustment is widened to long-term infrastructure. A time-limited programme, capped at £5 billion, matches private investment in British growth funds.
§ 07Building British Skills
Four papers replace a system that funds one route generously and the rest poorly. Every citizen in England receives a National Skills Account at 16, held for life, which records their qualifications and holds their entitlements in skills units that rise each year with prices. Funding for education from 16 to 18 follows the young person into school, college or an apprenticeship. At 18 every citizen receives 20,000 units, which may be spent at any point in their life on a degree, a technical qualification, the training in an apprenticeship or the launch of a business, and the account is topped up at 25 and 40. Designated strategic subjects such as physics, chemistry, mathematics and engineering are funded for their full accredited length. Where a course costs more than the entitlement, the university may charge the difference to its graduates and bears the risk that it is not repaid. Living costs are supported by loans that rise with prices and nothing more.
Universities of Technology are established alongside the research universities and linked to the Catapult centres, technical colleges become the home of dual training and employers take ownership of technical standards. A new British Master qualification gives technical careers a respected summit, and no route is allowed to be a dead end. Employers direct the Growth and Skills Levy into the accounts of the people they train, the Immigration Skills Charge rises and is directed to training at home and a reserve power can limit dependence on sponsored workers. The NHS becomes responsible for funding the training of doctors and nurses, the cap on medical school places is lifted and funded training carries a period of NHS service. Dental training expands, salaried routes into teaching grow and employers who recruit doctors, nurses and teachers from abroad pay for doing so.
§ 08Building British Industry
Six papers and a funding note concentrate the state's industrial effort on four production missions in which Britain can own capabilities that others depend on. In advanced manufacturing the state upgrades national testing and certification, creates a pilot-line fund, takes power electronics and compound semiconductors into production, puts robots within reach of every manufacturer and opens a scale-up capital window for hardware. In advanced materials it builds a discovery network, a qualification service and pilot facilities. It also creates a British rare earth magnet industry and expanded nuclear and defence forging capacity. In life sciences it makes the NHS the best place in the world to run a trial, turns health data into a national research platform, gives proven innovations a single route into the NHS and a stable price for a decade and builds a standing pipeline for medicines manufacturing. In autonomy and robotics it creates a protected lane for dual-use procurement, a national standard and assurance framework, a proving network and faster approvals for autonomous operations.
Eleven production regions build on existing strengths, each paired with technical institutions and given prepared sites, power and planning permission in advance. A single consents service, fast environmental permits, a streamlined subsidy route, procurement designed for resilience and a fast-track route for specialists remove the obstacles to building. One Production Missions Board governs the missions, judged by published results, and programmes that fail are closed. The missions cost about £22.5 billion over ten years, much of it met by redirecting existing business support.
§ 09Sea Power: The Defence of an Island Nation
Britain is an island whose trade, energy and data arrive by sea or under it, and whose territories and closest allies lie across oceans. Its defence is rebuilt around that fact. The government publishes the tasks of the armed forces in priority order, beginning with the deterrent, the home waters and the seabed and the North Atlantic, and a force plan costed against each. Britain keeps its NATO commitment of 3.5 per cent of national income on core defence as a ceiling rather than a target. The plan rather than the percentage sets the budget, which on present estimates is around 3 per cent, and every programme follows rules for the lowest cost, from forward basing and common hulls to proven designs and continuous orders.
The Type 26 and Type 31 frigates are completed and a second batch of Type 31 frigates is ordered for the distant stations. The Type 45 destroyers are replaced by the air defence system that best meets the task, after a comparison of the planned distributed system with a Type 26 derivative. Both carriers are kept and properly equipped, with a standing role in the Atlantic, and up to twelve SSN-AUKUS submarines are built alongside an uncrewed fleet that guards the approaches and the seabed. A thirty-year shipbuilding plan gives British yards a steady drumbeat of orders, a strategic reserve of British merchant ships and seafarers is created and a new Undersea Infrastructure Act protects cables and pipelines. The Falklands garrison is made able to hold the islands alone, with a frigate based there, and the navy supports the programme in Antarctica. AUKUS becomes a permanent alliance, the Type 26 family is shared with Australia, Canada and Norway, Britain leads in the North Atlantic while its allies lead in the Pacific and each charter city's founding charter sets out how it is defended.
The army keeps its NATO division and its battlegroup in Estonia without expansion, holds heavy armour only for that division and takes on the defence of the home islands and missiles that strike ships. The air force continues GCAP, moving to fewer crewed aircraft each leading uncrewed ones as the uncrewed aircraft prove themselves, and expands maritime patrol. Every combat unit is equipped with drones bought as munitions, with orders that sustain the British production built through the autonomy mission, and a national counter-drone shield protects bases, ports and critical sites. Military support for Ukraine is brought to an end and the presence in the Middle East reduced, with the money returned to Britain's own tasks.
Expanding the frontier
A nation that only repairs its foundations cannot lead. These papers reach for the technologies and the ambition that will shape the century, in the tradition of a civilisation that has always explored, invented and built.
§ 10British Frontier AI and Industrial Acceleration
Britain builds an independent ability to develop, train and operate artificial intelligence within a few months of the global frontier. Two institutions carry the programme. A publicly controlled sovereign compute operator provides the computing capacity, and a privately led British Frontier AI Laboratory develops the models. Founders, employees and private investors hold the majority of the laboratory, the state co-invests as a minority on identical terms and a special share and contractual continuity rights protect British control whatever the size of the state's stake. The laboratory researches, trains and licenses models rather than building a consumer chatbot. Alongside a core frontier programme, divisions in life sciences, defence, space and materials apply the technology to the industries in which Britain can lead. The central scenario costs about £50 billion over five years, of which about £30 billion is public and £20 billion private, with up to £3 billion of state equity invested only alongside private capital.
§ 11Power from Orbit
Britain sets itself a national goal worthy of its history: within fifteen years, a 2 gigawatt solar power station in geostationary orbit delivering its power into the national grid, comparable to a large nuclear station. The programme climbs a ladder of capability that begins with what Britain already does well, from removing debris and servicing satellites to robotic assembly in orbit. On the way it beams the first power from orbit to a British receiver by year four, flies a 40 megawatt demonstrator by year six and operates a 500 megawatt station by year ten. An orbital power contract, working like a Contract for Difference, pays only for electricity actually delivered and allows private finance to be raised against it. An independent national space agency is re-established, and defence and human spaceflight branches grow from the same industrial base. The mission is funded in five-year blocks released only as each stage succeeds, at a cost of about £40 billion to the first station, around three-quarters of it public, over fifteen years.
§ 12British Charter Cities
The development aid budget is redirected, through a managed transition that begins in the first months in office, to founding productive cities overseas on long leases under British administration. Each city is agreed by treaty with a willing host on a lease of around a century, under which the host keeps sovereignty and delegates defined powers over planning, taxation, courts, policing and public services. A tiered offer allows partners that do not want full governance to take a lighter form of partnership. Each city brings common law, sound administration and infrastructure together in one place, and hosts receive lease income and a share of success that grows over time. Residence in a city creates no British nationality and no right to settle in the United Kingdom. A British Charter Cities Fund invests mainly through equity and loans, so that Britain recovers value, and the programme is built as a portfolio of a founding city with two or three in preparation. A reserve for humanitarian relief remains outside it.
§ 13The Southern Frontier: Britain in Antarctica
The ban on mineral activities in Antarctica can be reviewed from 2048, and Britain prepares the British Antarctic Territory for that day while complying fully with the Antarctic Treaty and its environmental Protocol until they change. Britain states plainly that it would support opening the continent to development after 2048 under a binding regime that respects its claim, and that it will use its veto against any regime that does not.
Year-round operations expand, with Signy reopened and an early replacement for the ice patrol ship, and a new inland station and a second polar ship follow as the survey and the diplomacy progress. A national geological and geophysical survey maps the territory and its seas as permitted science, with the data held as a sovereign asset. Britain drafts a mineral regime built on the 1988 Convention, builds a coalition of claimant states to defend claimant rights and makes the case for opening the continent to partners who do not yet share it. The Falkland Islands become a gateway to Antarctica, with commercial cooperation from Chile on support services, and British and Falklands vessels take a stake in the krill fishery within science-based limits. A state-led test bed for autonomous systems and closed-loop living links the programme to Power from Orbit, and a new settlement permit gives private ventures a lawful route to establish British stations in the territory.
Paying for the programme: costs, tax cuts, savings and funding →
We did not create the civilisation we inherited, and we will not be its last custodians. Our task is to receive what was handed to us, improve what we inherited, create what does not yet exist and transmit something greater.