Category: notes from JK

In the last week before the election I want to offer some of the reasons why I think a Green vote is a positive vote for the future…

Transport is such a vital issue… it’s how we get to work, see family and friends as well as how everything we buy gets to us. Traffic jams, train delays and sky-high costs at the pump or for a rail ticket all get us worked up.

Moving stuff and people around is vital, but carbon emissions from transport are also a major concern. While other the sectors’ emissions declined 9.5% across the EU, transport emissions grew a huge 32% between 1990 and 2005.

The right transport policies can create jobs, reduce pollution and save people money. Currently the car all too often seems the quickest, cheapest and easiest option for people’s journeys. Cars, whether running on petrol or batteries, will be with us for as long as I can imagine. But the mix has to change from car dominance to occasional use.

To make transport affordable and accessible to as many people as possible the Green Party proposes:

• Investing £3 billion to buy 30,000 new buses, create 70,000 jobs and spend £2bn more to subsidise fares and create new routes.

• Spending £2bn on a railway system brought into public ownership with new track, new trains and also urban tram schemes. This would created 20,000 jobs. We would also spend £3bn to bring rail fares down to be in line with the European average – not the 50% higher than European fares we currently suffer.

• We would oppose new airport runways or major road building schemes. We would support changes to taxation so that airline tickets were no longer unfairly subsidised (by being tax-free) compared to other forms of transport.

• We would introduce a core UK rail freight network and would introduce road use charges for lorries in Britain, as has been done elsewhere in the EU. This would cover the true costs of road-based freight and move it back to the rail network.

These are just some of our key policies on transport. We have detailed proposals covering all aspects of transport from rail networks, car emissions and noise to international shipping. You can read more about them on the Green Party website.

In the last week before the election I want to offer some of the reasons why I think a Green vote is a positive vote for the future…

As the financial crisis of the credit crunch was followed by a recession, the Labour government gave us some money to spend now (in the form of cuts in VAT and bringing forward spending budget for future years) in return for higher taxes in the future as well as likely service cuts.

Stimulating the economy with government action is certainly needed, but it needs to be big, bold, positive actions that will lead to long-term jobs in a stable economy.

The Green Party proposes a £30 billion programme we call the Green New Deal. This would create thousands of jobs in areas such as upgrading public transport, renewable energy and reducing the carbon footprint of buildings.

There are 700,000 empty homes that could be improved and put back into use. We believe that with local government action these should be improved and converted to provide affordable, quality housing to rent. All homes converted or built would meet tight low carbon standards, so not only helping to meet our emissions targets but also to build up local skills in achieving such standards. Our aim would be to invest £6 billion a year to convert or build 60,000 extra dwellings annually. We would also work heard to spread housing and so economic activity more evenly across the country.

We would also change the tax system reducing VAT, abolishing road tax whilst creating pollution taxes. We would take strong action to close offshore tax havens and prevent tax avoidance. These changes would help to pay for our proposed investments.

Overall these policies would quickly and positively help to boost the economy, discourage pollution and help to support the new technologies and industries we need in the UK to compete in the post-fossil fuel world.

To read more about the Green New Deal and other policies, visit the Green Party’s website

In the last week before the election I want to offer some of the reasons why I think a Green vote is a positive vote for the future…

I was chatting to a local resident very active in his community, particularly with regards to combating anti-social behaviour. He mentioned that he thought a party should be set up which would have as a core policy legalising drugs. “In essence, that's our policy,” I responded much to his surprise. I've had police officers privately also wish for an end to the drugs prohibition too.

Drug addiction is a public health issue, not a criminal one. Greens would take the drug trade out of criminal control and put it in a regulated, legal environment. This would cut out the criminal gangs and move us towards treating addiction – not pushing vulnerable people into an underground, unsafe black market.

Green policy is about creating a true 'health system' focussed on prevention and healthiness, rather than the current 'sickness system' which tends to intervene when problems are acute and so focus on processes to deal with sick people.

By reversing the privatisation of the NHS and reducing defence spending Greens would be able to:

• Abolish prescription charges,
• Increase community based services,
• Bring services like hospital cleaners and cooks back into the NHS.

We would also do much more to research and prevent the environmental causes of illness, such as from pollution or from agrochemicals in our food.

Through education, urban planning and eco-taxes we would strongly promote walking and cycling which would help prevent diseases, increase well-being and reduce pollution which is linked to childhood asthma. We'd also cut our carbon foot-print, a win-win policy!

By focussing on people and their right to be healthy, Greens promote lifelong health.

I've always been in favour of reforming our political system to make it muchre more fair and more representative of our society. The key steps to acheive that have in my view always been the introduction of proportional representation, removing the monarch's constitutional role and an elected upper house to replace the anachronistic House of Lords.

Tied up with these would be additional reforms to enable much greater transparency and openness – strengthening the Freedom of Information Act, individual voter registration to improve the resilience of elections to fraud and a complete overhaul of how elected representatives are paid. This final point, clearly the centre of attention at the moment, is only one part of the wider reforms needed.

What I often hesitated over, uncertain as to the implications, is eliminating ministers and the Prime Minister from the Parliamentary system. In other words, electing the Prime Minister separately so that he is not brought into power on the back of an overwhelming majority (made worse by the current unfair electoral system) of MPs from his party.

It is hard to imagine divorcing the Executive, Her Majesty's Government, from the Houses of Parliament. But I have come to the conclusion that this is a step we must take. Why? Let us look at what we gain from having the Executive inside Parliament:

• They are part of the legislature so can quickly and decisively enact laws;
• They are within the chambers and so can easily be questioned and challenged;
• They are relatively accessible to their colleagues in Parliament.

But what are the disadvantages:

• Laws get passed without decent scrutiny due to the pressure the Government has through the whips on their own colleagues;
• We get the ugly spectacle of governing ministers briefing against each other and the Prime Minister because they could all technically get the top job or boost their position within their Parliamentary party;
• On becoming Ministers the MPs inherently become distracted from their real jobs of representing their constituents which is taken on by other MPs and staff;
• A critically-minded legislator is lost as the member must vote with the government at all times or forfeit their job for 'disloyalty';
• Politicians aren't usually the best qualified people to manage large, often technocratic, government departments.

There is growing consensus that there are too many people in both Houses of Parliament. This is undoubtedly true and cutting the numbers down will help in all sorts of ways from the practical (more room in the chambers) to the financial (lowered costs to us taxpayers). But Government now also requires a huge number of Ministers which absorbs much of the majority party in business which isn't directly scrutiny or legislating. There is room for paring down some parts of government (for example Greens would eliminate the majority of various tax credits and benefits into one simple citizens' income and similarly would hugely simplify the number of taxes such as merging income tax with national insurance). But modern day government is complex and cannot be oversimplified so the need for a good number of ministers will remain.

I am now of the view that the Executive should be separate with the Prime Minister directly elected. He would then appoint his Ministers (who would not be able to sit in Parliament) and they would face confirmation hearings (in the US style). Parliament would also hold the right to require Ministers to attend Committee meetings to explain themselves.

This would enable legislators to get on with the job of scrutinising, creating law, holding government to account and representing their constituents. Meanwhile the Executive could focus on governing but with decent checks and balances in place. This is the kind of radical change our country needs.