Responding to the news that Rachel Reeves is asking Ministers to identify efficiency savings worth 5% of their current budgets, Green Party Co-Leader, Adrian Ramsay said:

“Labour call their 5% cuts across government departments “efficiency savings.”

“We call it what it is: cuts to services.

“This amounts to the continuation of the same damaging, unpopular and unnecessary policy that has, under successive governments, so devastated our country over many years.” 

He continued, “Instead of stripping more money from essential front-line services that are already on their knees, Labour could and should look to tax the very richest more to raise crucial funds.

“This could act as a lifeline for key services such as our NHS.

“We remain clear, cutting services always was and still is, a political choice.”

Responding to today’s “milestones” speech by the Prime Minister, Green Party Co-Leader, Adrian Ramsay, said, 

“These milestones aren’t a clear route to real change. Today’s listicle, while pointing in the right direction on a handful of issues, is missing the wholesale ambition and drive that a government elected on a change agenda needs. We have a country reeling from severe flooding and facing more storms this weekend, a country where people are struggling to heat their homes this winter, and a country worried about finding the school places and doctor appointments that those they love need. Instead of listing out a few priorities, suggesting that these will be delivered at the expense of other important issues, we wanted today to see a gear change in this government where they accept that we need to ask the very richest to pay more tax so we could properly fund all our frontline public services.”

Responding to this morning’s NAO report on the crisis in Britain’s prisons, Green Party MP Siân Berry said,

“The National Audit Office has revealed in stark terms the futility of a society trying to imprison away crime.

“However fast the Government builds prisons, at the current rates of offending and reoffending, the respite from the current crisis of overcrowding will only last a handful of years.

“The Government must face this reality and build not more prisons but a planned programme of prevention and more effective alternatives to incarceration, particularly for women, young people and offenders whose crimes are driven by poverty and destitution.

“We need wholesale reform of short prison sentences, a focus on providing a real new start for people leaving prison, including safe housing, and a clear-headed look at the many ways people can repay their criminal debts to society more constructively.” 

She continued,

“At the heart of this crisis is a continuous error from successive governments – amplified by misleading front pages – in assuming that the way to reduce crime is to keep locking up more and more of our citizens.

“Reducing crime means investing in services and job opportunities for young people, and I am confident that Justice Minister Lord Timpson knows this.

“The only question is whether the Prime Minister is bold and brave enough to allow him to bring forward common-sense reforms to bring prison populations back down, rather than trying to build their way out of this crisis.”

Former Green Party MP, Caroline Lucas, has given her reaction to suggestions that plans for a Natural History GCSE have been shelved because it is “seen as a Conservative party initiative.” Caroline was one of the key drivers of the GCSE in the last parliament. She said:

“I very much hope that Labour will look at this again, and appreciate both the popularity of the proposed Natural History GCSE, and the urgency of its introduction. The GCSE enjoys huge support, including from WWF and the Wildlife Trusts through to the Natural History Museum, the Association of School and College Leaders, 17 universities and thousands of young people themselves.  

“It was a privilege to work with author and former BBC producer Mary Colwell, who has spearheaded the campaign, to persuade the last Government to agree to it. The curriculum has been prepared over several years by the OCR exam board, and it’s close to being ready to roll out. Stalling at this point would be a disaster, doing a massive disservice to students who desperately want to learn more about the natural world; failing to equip them with the skills of the naturalist which have increasingly been lost, and making it harder for all of us to restore and protect nature.

“Over the last half century, the world has lost 60% of the mass of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles – our education system urgently needs to rise to the challenge of reversing this shocking scale of loss.”