Plaid Cymru 2015 Manifesto – Working for Wales

Like the Green Party, the Plaid Cymru manifesto lead from the starting point that the Westminster political system is broken and politicians from other political parties have failed the people they claim to represent. With calls to end the austerity experiment and the prospect of a hung parliament once again increasingly likely (how wrong we were) Plaid were keen to portray themselves as kingmakers in a future coalition government, along with its sister party in Scotland, the SNP. Both Leanne Wood and Nicola Sturgeon went onto receive national coverage and recognition as a result of their participation in the televised Party Leader’s debates.

Plaid’s detailed manifesto, for a Westminster election, focused on “improving the lives of everyone in Wales” and immediately pledged that it would seek the same deal for Wales on funding and powers as Scotland; to save and strengthen the NHS by training and recruiting extra doctors and nurses; to get Wales working again with more public contracts for welsh companies, increasing the minimum wage to a living wage and taking 70,000 welsh companies out of business rates completely.

As expected, the manifesto also set out its plans to bring decisions closer to home, with the full transfer to the Welsh Government, of the powers recommended in both reports by the Commission on Devolution in Wales, as soon as possible.