4 April 2022

Caroline Lucas, Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion, has the following response to the launch of the International Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Working Group III: Mitigation of Climate Change report, out today: 

“This report confirms that the devastating future towards which we are hurtling can still be avoided if Governments make the right choices right now. The heart-stopping consequences of yet more failed climate leadership are unimaginable for every single individual and species with whom we share this planet. It’s time to pick a side – the fossil fuel polluters and those who bankroll them, or the future of humanity. We already have the solutions we need, and we know that action is far cheaper than delay. 

Yet our reckless Government, which talks up new North Sea oil & gas drilling, while rumours abound over reviewing the moratorium on fracking, is fiddling while the world burns. It’s failing in its first duty – to keep its citizens safe. If Global Britain is to mean anything, then Ministers must rise to the challenge of the COP Presidency and demonstrate real leadership now. 

Locking us into new oil & gas for decades means we’ll have to rely on expensive, unproven and as yet unscalable carbon dioxide removal technologies. While some extraction for past emissions will be unavoidable, the impact of the giant hosepipe of carbon emissions currently gushing into the atmosphere won’t be stopped by sucking it back out with a paper straw. This ‘burn now, pay later’ approach simply gives fossil fuel companies licence to wilfully continue with business as usual, when this emergency demands the opposite. 

There’s no silver bullet to tackling the climate emergency. But we do have an array of effective, realistic and genuine solutions at our fingertips – from rapidly winding down fossil fuels, to reversing the depletion of our natural world’s carbon sinks, and developing long-lasting energy efficiency for our leaky homes. The only thing we lack is the political will to deliver them.   

The goals of energy security, tackling the cost of living crisis, and cutting climate-wrecking emissions all point in the same direction: an energy system based on renewables and energy efficiency which will deliver a safer and fairer world for all, with bountiful energy supplies, warm homes, clean air, and a thriving natural world. This report shows there’s no time left to delay.” 

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31 March 2022

As energy bills are to surge by more than 50% tomorrow, Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsay said:

“People are already struggling under the rising cost of living and tomorrow will mark another blow to those who are forced to choose between heating and eating. 

“While people are bearing the brunt of spiralling energy costs, oil and gas companies are raking in unprecedented profits. We need an immediate tax on those companies’ dirty profits to raise money to provide immediate financial support.

“The Government has utterly failed to help people in fuel poverty and there is now no Government funding that homeowners can access to help them with insulation. 

“We need an immediate plan to insulate every home in the country that needs it and ramp up renewable energy provision, so that we are no longer reliant on oil and gas.

“That retrofit revolution is the only sustainable way to bring down the cost of living, while also benefitting those on lowest incomes and creating green jobs.”

ENDS

Notes

1

Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsay is available for interview to respond to the price cap hike  – for more information or to arrange an interview contact press@greenparty.org.uk or call 0203 691 9401

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31 March 2022

As the Government ends free covid testing from 1 April, Green Party deputy leader Amelia Womack said:

“The pandemic is not over and ending free testing will both hit the poorest hardest and prolong the impact of covid. The introduction of charges is penalising people for being responsible and will disincetivise people from testing.

“This move will also harm key workers who need to test regularly for their jobs, and will hinder the collection of data of the number of cases. 

“Fundamentally, the introduction of charges is a further attack on the principles of free healthcare in this country. 

“It is shameful that this Government, which has wasted billions on dodgy contracts to ministers’ mates during the pandemic, is now once again making ordinary people bear the brunt of the financial cost of covid.”

ENDS

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28 March 2022

• No evidence that academies and free schools raise standards overall.

• A comprehensive recovery plan would include a focus on the real needs of children and students and an inclusive, creative and collaborative curriculum

The Green Party has responded to the government’s new white paper on education which calls for all schools to join a multi-academy trust by 2030 and to be open for a minimum 32.5 hour school week [1]. Greens are backing teaching unions in challenging the lack of ambition for young people in this document, the focus on academic targets without the extra resources and oppose the academisation of schools.

Green Party Education spokesperson, Vix Lowthion, who is a working secondary school teacher, said:

“The government is using the disruption caused by Covid as a way to push through their damaging educational agenda of tough academic targets and more testing, rooted in a longer school week and Ofsted inspections.  

“This White Paper also resurrects the previously unpopular policy to force the academisation of our schools, when there remains no evidence that academies and free schools raise standards overall. By contrast, there is plenty of evidence that multi academy trusts, in particular, are syphoning public money without the accountability offered by local councils.

“This is not the way to support children and teachers to recover from the disruption caused by the pandemic. A comprehensive recovery plan would include a focus on the rounded needs of children and students and an inclusive, creative and collaborative curriculum. Instead, we will see even more pressure heaped on teachers and students to achieve higher targets in English and Maths, resulting in even more school hours spent away from lessons in music, PE, humanities, technology and the arts. Young people need to be offered a broad and balanced curriculum to learn, show their potential and to succeed.”

Young Greens co-chair Kelsey Trevett said:  

“A focus on maths and English means the government once again fails to recognise the value of creative and humanities-based subjects, creating exam factories for the sole purpose of preparing young people to enter an exploitative profit-driven workplace.”

Young Greens co-chair Jane Baston added: 

“These standards also place an extra burden on teachers, taking them over their annual hours and placing them under even more pressure within a system which only sees academic achievement and grades, not people.”

Notes

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/mar/28/plans-for-englands-schools-include-national-behaviour-survey 

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23 March 2022

• Spring Statement negligent to those on lowest incomes
• Not one mention of the climate made by Rishi Sunak during statement
• Adrian Ramsay: “It’s staggering that while the country faces crisis after crisis, the Chancellor continues to look after the interests of fossil fuel companies and his party’s backbenchers, while ignoring the plight of millions on lower incomes”

Responding to the Chancellor’s Spring Statement today [Wednesday 23 March], Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsay said:

“It’s staggering that while the country faces crisis after crisis, the Chancellor continues to look after the interests of fossil fuel companies and his party’s backbenchers, while ignoring the plight of millions on lower incomes.

“It’s negligence in the extreme to have offered so little to help those struggling through this cost of living crisis, when we would have restored and doubled the Universal Credit uplift for those on the lowest incomes.

“And he didn’t even bother to mention the climate once. The Chancellor clearly does not see that tackling the cost of living crisis requires solving the climate crisis.

“The Green Party has repeatedly called for a ‘Dirty Profits Tax’ on the excessive profits from UK oil and gas extraction, and to use this money to provide proper support for every household, and particularly those who need it most. 

“Instead, the Chancellor has turned a deaf ear to the pleas of those on the lowest incomes, ignored the plight of those on benefits and has done next to nothing to tackle the climate crisis.

“He had money to spend but chose to spend it on tax cuts for the better off and encouraging climate-damaging activity. A cut to fuel duty which will disproportionately benefit wealthier households that are more likely to own cars, more likely to drive larger cars, and more likely to travel long distances, fails to support those reliant on ever more expensive public transport. 

“While the cut to VAT on energy efficiency measures and renewables is a positive step and a win for green campaigners, it will not have the impact we need without a proper government retrofit programme to support people to take advantage of it. The fact there was no clear plan for a full retrofit programme, which would help keep people warm and reduce eye-watering energy bills, shows the absolute lack of vision this floundering government has.

“Meanwhile, the promised future tax cut shows the Chancellor is focused on winning the next general election, and not helping those on benefits and lower incomes who are in desperate need right now.”

Ahead of today’s budget, the Green Party called on the Chancellor to use the Spring Statement to:

• Address pay inequality and provide real society security, including restoring the £20 uplift to Universal Credit and doubling it to £40 per week and extending emergency fuel payments to all by providing each household with an additional £320 to help them pay for spiralling energy costs
• Invest in energy efficiency and energy security, including funding local authorities to better insulate all homes and carry out deep retrofit of 1 million homes a year
• Invest in green jobs, including a retraining guarantee for existing oil and gas workers, as well as those who have recently left the sector
• Tax pollution and wealth, including increasing the supplementary tax already charged on North Sea oil and gas to 40%, which would raise £5bn, and transition towards a carbon tax to make polluters pay
• Use the power of money for good, including banning any bank holding a UK banking licence from investing in new fossil fuel development and updating the Bank of England’s mandate so that funding the sustainability transition becomes a central objective, alongside the maintenance of price stability.

ENDS

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