Key Policies for Wales

Christian Democracy in Wales is not about giving privileges to the Church - it is about returning to the roots of what it means to be Welsh in the 21st Century. Our nation needs a radical return to principled Christianity.


Respect for God in Education
The approach which marks out the Christian Peoples Alliance is our commitment to the highest ideals of liberal education - the formation of the whole person. Our approach is to impart a clear sense of moral rights and responsibilities and foster good ideas of citizenship. Just as important to children and raising standards is tackling poverty and supporting stability in the home, which comes through loving parental relationships.

• There are too many children in primary classes, with 30 pupils often crammed into a school room. We will appoint more teachers and reduce class sizes to 25 so that more time and attention is given to each child.
• Saddling students with huge debts is wrong in principle and deters the less well-off from going to university. CPA Cymru will therefore guarantee at least the present financial support to Welsh students in Welsh universities until at least 2011.
• At the moment it is the Law that every school in Wales must have a collective act of worship which must be of a broadly Christian character. We agree with this law, but are concerned that it is only a matter of time before the Assembly government will remove it. Whilst expecting that schools will accord respect to pupils of all
  faiths or none, our policy is to retain Christian Assemblies in Schools and for there to be greater encouragement for local churches to be involved in participating in and taking Assemblies.
• CPA Cymru will be responsive to parental concerns and demands, including that for increased provision of Welsh-medium education from nursery-age upwards.
• Schools will be expected to offer sex education in a manner which promotes marriage, faithfulness and commitment. They should not interfere with the proper parental role by issuing contraceptives, offering advice on abortion, or providing morning-after pills. Pupils will instead be taught the skills and confidence to make right choices, especially when faced by the challenges of alcohol and substance abuse.

A Caring Ethic in Health and Social Services
Health problems associated with the consumerist society will be made part of the economic equation and not just addressed once people become ill. Our approach is distinctive in that we want Wales to be a compassionate nation that values relationships above material possessions

• The link between poverty and health is well known. CPA Cymru will establish a school of poverty studies so the needs of the poor are central to Assembly policy.
• CPA Cymru will restore fair access to health care by ensuring that national standards of provision are the bench-marks rather than targets. This will end the damage to clinical priorities and help enable individual structures to work more closely in partnership for the good of the patient.
• CPA Cymru is unashamed to declare its commitment to the principle of respect for life. Our objective is to develop a new caring, pro-life ethic that will embrace an end to all forms of violence, whether gun crime, domestic violence, the abuse of children, the violence of abortionism and embryo experimentation, sexual exploitation of women, people trafficking, slavery or cruelty to animals.
• CPA Cymru will give direct support to pro-life caring agencies in their counselling and bereavement work with women. A public information campaign will be launched across Wales warning of the consequences of abortion, such as post-abortion syndrome, health complications and the danger of greater risk of breast cancer. 
• Adoption will normally be confined to the traditional family unit involving both a father and a mother.
• Hospitals and residential homes will be asked to look at their policies towards the care and treatment of older people. CPA Cymru does not believe that it is ever justified to treat older people as less entitled to life and respect merely because of their age or because of frailty.
• Deliberate acts leading to the death of older or severely disabled people by healthcare professionals will be exposed and prosecuted. Policies to introduce euthanasia by the back door will be rejected.

Let the Churches do their Work
All across Wales Christian churches and Christian people are working hard to help poor and vulnerable people. Churches and church groups are often the most active and effective groups reaching out to those in need in any community. Yet Churches rarely receive the support they need from the Assembly or from local government, because there is an in built prejudice in the system against religious projects, and especially Christian projects.

• CPA Cymru will break this prejudice and help churches to improve and grow the projects which are working well. We are therefore proposing a Church Social Action fund, which will give match funding to churches undertaking social action work.
• While accepting that the 22 local authorities in Wales should not fund the worship activities of faith groups, CPA Cymru will actively support the funding of faith based volunteer projects, particularly involving young people to help with environmental clean up projects, the elderly and disadvantaged.

Recognising our Heritage
CPA Cymru wants our children to understand and respect the Christian values of our forefathers: values of peacefulness and of tolerance and respect for all people regardless of age, race, gender, culture and belief; values of trust and commitment to serving others, for the common good, even when it is difficult and painful to do so.

• We would now like to see £3 million of the £134 million culture budget put towards a National Centre to celebrate the Religious Heritage of Wales.
• We think that every sitting of the Assembly should begin with Christian prayer, as they do in Westminster. In Wales, we would like these prayers to be said by our young people of faith, invited, individually, from all over Wales, to come and pray for our Nation's leaders, before they start the business of every Assembly day.
• CPA Cymru will implement government, community and work-place initiatives which will consolidate and build on the efforts made by schools in Wales to create a harmonious, mutually-respectful bilingual society.
• CPA Cymru recognises the contribution that the arts can make to society and that the arts in Wales need support in ways that arts in other more populous countries do not require. CPA Cymru will back the arts, including such pillars of Welsh-language life as the local and national eisteddfodau.
  
  

Strengthening the Economy
Wales has areas of great private affluence alongside poverty, public squalor, high unemployment and lack of investment. The priority of CPA Cymru is to tackle inequality for the long-term by supporting the emergence of strong local economies, linking local production to local need and new jobs offering meaningful work.

• CPA Cymru will draw on the best strategic business leadership to improve Welsh government and enhance job creation. A partnership will be formed with existing business support agencies, individuals and institutions to launch a £500 million Wales Regeneration Fund. This will provide interest free loans and support for mutual guarantee schemes.
• The Fund will be guided by a green jobs strategy. With the right support, Wales can become a world-leader in green-business start-ups, taking advantage of EU-requirements for clean-energy supplies, energy-efficient technology, better insulation, recycling, eco-tourism and eco-friendly agriculture.
• Working with the family of Christian Democrats in the European Union, CPA Cymru will ensure that Wales draws on all available European funding to back long-term jobs, sustainable economic development and real prosperity.
• Using new legislative powers, the Welsh Assembly will restore 52 predominantly retail-free Sundays a year, with exemptions for essential and emergency items. There has been an erosion in Wales of pay and a half or double pay for unsocial hours. We believe this is an important indicator of what a worker, especially a parent, forgoes by working shifts and weekends, and CPA Cymru will press for unions and employers work to recognise this in their pay structures.

Stress Free Transport
Wales is following the stressful living of other parts of Britain because millions of journeys do not work properly. If people can move about easily and quickly, work, home and leisure are better.

• The foremost priority for the Christian Peoples Alliance in tackling road congestion and inadequate trains and buses is to make the systems we have work. Our policies for strong local economies will also reduce the need for long journeys.
• CPA Cymru will give firm support to boosting the bus network. We favour partnerships between local councils and the Welsh Assembly in introducing bus contracts for new route networks.
• We will support easier access to community transport, especially in rural areas and look at the needs of shift workers. This means improving support to villages to ensure that they are connected to the public transport network.
• The CPA favours linking commuter rail lines with feeder systems using either bus or coach routes. This will allow commuters to travel across outer areas without needing to travel via central interchanges, reducing congestion.
• We propose a new approach to Welsh transport, based on the coach, especially using existing motorways and A roads, which is capable of eliminating car overuse and freeing up those who want to use cars without congestion.

Justice for the Developing World
The death rate in Africa has not changed much since Live Aid 2005, when we were told that a person dies every three seconds because we have too much money and they have too little. The Welsh Assembly currently gives £0 of its annual budget of £14 billion to help the developing world. It leaves the job to the proper politicians in London. We think this should change.

• If we have £14 billion to spend on our public services in Wales, we can afford to give 0.1% of it to the poor. That's £14 million. Oxfam tell us that £5 per month, can provide basic essentials like clean water and healthcare to the people who need them most. If this is true, then £14 million a year can be used to permanently lift 233,000 people from starvation poverty.

The War in Iraq
The Christian Peoples Alliance was the first political party in Britain to publicly oppose the war in Iraq at our conference in October 2002. We said then that a pre-emptive war would be immoral, illegal and unjust and continue to do so. None of the criteria for a just war nor UN criteria were met at the time and have not been met since. Our members in the National Assembly will speak out against it and all causes of war, such trade injustice, the arms trade and extreme poverty. However, having invaded the country and removed the government, we recognise our responsibility to the ordinary people of Iraq to stay as long as we are needed and wanted.