THE Welsh Conservatives will today unveil their Senedd election manifesto, promising to prioritise economic recovery after what they called 22 years of "misrule".
Whereas Welsh Labour is asking voters to keep in mind the Welsh response to the pandemic and give them the tools to "get the job done", the Tories frame this election as a vote on longer-term government performance.
Party leader Andrew RT Davies will tell voters his party has "an ambitious plan" to "ensure we recover from the pandemic and 22 years of Labour rule".
The Tories will allege their Labour opponents would raise taxes – something Mark Drakeford's party has dismissed as "desperate lies" – and claim that only a Conservative government in Cardiff Bay can "get the economy on the road to recovery".
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Among the pledges Mr Davies is expected to announce on Tuesday are the abolition of business rates for small firms and a retraining programme for workers "hardest-hit" by the pandemic.
The Tories will promise a "jump start" scheme for microbusinesses, covering National Insurance contributions for eligible traders who take on two new employees.
Details have not yet been released in any further detail, but Mr Davies' party will also pledge a "new deal" for North Wales and set up there a business support scheme called Innovate Wales.
And the manifesto is also set to contain pledges to build £2 billion worth of roads, including an M4 'relief road' bypassing Newport and upgrades to both the A40 and A55; as well as building 20,000 charging points for vehicles.
Ahead of the manifesto launch, Mr Davies said people in Wales "urgently need a plan for recovery and for jobs" and vowed his party would "stop at nothing in our drive to create the first business-friendly economy in Wales for a generation".
He alleged the Welsh economy had been left "to fester over the past two decades" and promised a cut of at least one-penny-in-the-pound to the basic rate of income tax by the end of the next Senedd term.
The Welsh Conservatives will launch their manifesto in Wrexham later on Tuesday.
This article originally appeared on the Argus' sister site The National.
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