News / Politics
Green leader insists ‘I’m not anti-business’
The leader of the Green Party has attacked the “stereotype” description of her party as being anti-business, while turning her fire on large corporations over low wages and tax avoidance.
Natalie Bennett was in Bristol yesterday, five months away from a general election in which the Greens aim to unseat Liberal Democrat MP Stephen Williams in Bristol West and overturn Labour’s majority in Bristol South.
Bennett said she wanted big business to behave more responsibly and end the culture of low pay.
Speaking to Bristol Business News, she turned most of her fire on the behaviour of supermarkets, the financial services sector and the energy companies, who she said often put their shareholders ahead of customers and sent their profits abroad.
Low pay was crippling the economy, she added, and reiterated her policy to introduce a living wage – rising to £10 an hour by 2020 from the current minimum wage of £6.50 an hour.
“If the person sweeping the road outside Joe’s Café gets a living wage then they can afford to go in and have a cup of tea every so often,” she said. “And the care worker next door can have tea and a slice of cake. Everyone benefits.”
“You can’t have a fair society when 22% of those in work earn less than the Living Wage [£7.85 an hour at present],” she said.
Meanwhile, Bennett announced:
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The Green Party would implement a national programme of energy efficiency and conservation – insulating homes “street by street” rather than on a piecemeal method – making them super-energy efficient and lifting “nine out of 10 households out of fuel poverty”. This would create 200,000 jobs, she said.
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A call for a smaller financial sector, which had been “allowed to operate almost as if the recession hadn’t happened”.
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Key sectors in Bristol – aerospace and defence – would be adapted over time and encouraged to stop making environment-damaging products such as aircraft in favour of low-carbon technology and renewable energy equipment.
Green Party prospective parliamentary candidate for Bristol West Darren Hall, one of those accompanying Ms Bennett on her visit to the city, added: “Some of Bristol’s aerospace businesses have been the first to engage with Bristol Green Capital projects because they would like to be building other products.”
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