Green Party’s Sian Berry: ‘Labour’s manifesto commitments are not watertight’
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Sian Berry, candidate for London mayor and co-leader of the Green Party of England and Wales
COMMENT This election, we have committed to building a million more council homes in the next 10 years, which is 250,000 more than Labour plans to build in total.
Labour’s manifesto commitments are also not watertight when it comes to protecting estates from demolition, which Labour has done in the past. This is something I have fought hard to get the mayor of London to do, but it needs to be countrywide. Estate demolition breaks up communities and has meant the loss of more than 4,000 council homes in London in the past 15 years.
Both the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives are focused still on home ownership and full-price market homes, not the low-cost rented and council homes that millions of renters and people facing homelessness need.
COMMENT This election, we have committed to building a million more council homes in the next 10 years, which is 250,000 more than Labour plans to build in total.
Labour’s manifesto commitments are also not watertight when it comes to protecting estates from demolition, which Labour has done in the past. This is something I have fought hard to get the mayor of London to do, but it needs to be countrywide. Estate demolition breaks up communities and has meant the loss of more than 4,000 council homes in London in the past 15 years.
Both the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives are focused still on home ownership and full-price market homes, not the low-cost rented and council homes that millions of renters and people facing homelessness need.
Along with Labour, Greens have committed to building up private renters’ rights, abolishing no-fault evictions and bringing in powers to control rents. This is the right thing to do, fixing the unequal balance that exists between the rights of landlords and tenants in a tenure many families and older people now live in – a tenure which needs much more security.
Greens are also the only party that wants to give communities the right to buy land that comes up for sale to deliver new affordable homes, as is already happening in Scotland.
We will introduce a land value tax, as proposed by Winston Churchill, to stabilise the property market, discourage landbanking, and incentivise the release of empty properties to the market.
Greens are for more devolution of powers including planning and taxation to London, to bring decision-making closer to the people affected.
We also want to look again at land values and focus on the social value of land, like the St Ann’s Hospital site in Haringey, which was needed more for healthcare than for housing.
Our Green New Deal would retrofit and make all homes safe.
The government needs to step in and help make sure every home provider can get cladding replaced with safe materials – Grenfell has shown we can’t stint on safety.
