How will we pay for our ambitious, fair and positive policies and proposals?

2 MINUTE BUDGET 2015 to 2020             a summary of the GPEW Financial Appendix

Our exciting manifesto of 47 items (see appendix) is costed above baseline at          £  723.0bn 

The total new income and savings is                                                    £  723.0bn

Savings                                                                 £ bns           (project 5 years        total)

1. We will kill two outrageous vanity projects :-

# HS 2/3 (but support sensible rail projects)                                   10*              (50)

# Trident and nuclear energy                                                          30.0             (100)

2. We will reduce the roads programme                                    7
3. Govt efficiencies                                                                          6
4. The rest                                                                                         3

 Total savings                                                                                    106.0

* HS2. This is based on figures in HS2’s corporate plan and doesn’t include costs of objectors consultants, studies, lobbyists, lawyers, third parties and political time over 5 years

Recovering taxes

5. We will support Osborne’s and Ball’s new enthusiasm for recovering

unpaid taxes, and make it stick, for ever, not just for the election            90.0

Fairer greener taxes              

6. We will tax ‘financial transactions’ at a very low rate but a very

high yield, and damp down the over-fast trading markets.                        77.0

7. We will relentlessly seek fair contributions from the assets and incomes

of the super rich; fairly tax the so called success payments to the

financiers – obscene salaries, bonuses etc                                       87.0

8. We will tax aviation fuel and add VAT 0
9. We have 20 other green taxes see appendix together with the above

 Total taxation of those who can afford it                                       617.0

Fairer pay

• We note that low wages are invested in the local economy.

High wages are invested in the global economy and in tax avoidance.

We will seek a living wage of £10 per hour thus saving tax credits   included above

• We will set a limit on top pay of from 10 to 100 times the lowest pay in all organisations

This will enable a progressive Government to invest in a sustainable UK PLC, especially in renewable energy, and save the planet and all its passengers

©  John Youatt for the Derbyshire Green Party May 2015

Derbyshire Dales District Council’s Local Plan for most of the constituency is currently being Examined in Public at the Town Hall. There are several sessions still to run, up to 23rd May. After that and after 8^th June we’ll have a result.

It is a rampantly Tory driven Plan, unrelentingly relying in part on very harmful greenfield extensions to towns and villages. It is trying to justify a target of 6500 houses against local wishes.

GPEW policy favours community led development

As planner and green activist, I’ve put forward

• reasons why the so called Objectively Assessed Need is mainly external demand, is not local need and is only a target, not a mandate
• that the target should be reduced, because half the housing area is in the Peak Park
• that there is a radical alternative for about 2000 houses – a community-led new village in the lowland south
• that heavy reliance on commercially led town and village extensions is a bad strategy

The officers are stubbornly resisting all alternatives. Liberal and independent councillors have voted against the allocations. 3 of 4 Labour councillors have, to my disappointment, voted for it.

Contact me if you want to know more.

John Youatt          john@youatt.co.uk               01629 636241

We are happy to announce the candidates for the Derbyshire Green Party in the 2017 General Election.

Chesterfield: David Wadsworth
Derby South: Ian Sleeman
Derbyshire Dales: Matthew Buckler
Mid-Derbyshire: Sue MacFarlane
North-East Derbyshire: David Kesteven
South Derbyshire: Marten Kats

We are not standing in Derby North and Bolsover. Other constituencies are covered by other local parties.

Derby Food Assembly is a not for profit food organisation, part of the wider Food Assembly network around Europe. It’s an online farmers market where customers can buy food from local producers and collect it from them directly at one location during the week. Food assemblies encourage people to buy directly from local producers, to link people to local produce and create a community around this food. If you’re in or around Derby, why not sign up- there’s no membership fee and no commitment to buy! https://foodassembly.com/en/assemblies/8002

Once you’ve ordered your food, you can pick it up on Tuesday 5pm – 7pm from the Greyhound on Friar Gate, where you’ll meet the farmers and other food producers.

The food assembly provides producers with a regular market place and allow them to harvest or produce exactly what has been ordered, reducing food waste and time. All producers are from within 30 miles (further for fish of course), reducing the carbon footprint of the food and the project champions local produce. It puts money back into the local community (rather than offshore bank accounts!). It offers a fairer deal and better experience for all.

Greens are enthusiastic supporters of initiatives like the food assembly. The current system of food production and distribution, dominated by industrial agriculture, multinational food corporations and supermarket chains is one of the biggest obstacles to fighting climate change and building a fairer world with resilient local communities. It is also extremely inefficient. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the UN, the value of  food wasted in the world in a single year is around 750 billion pounds and the amount wasted in Europe alone (and yes, the includes the UK) would feed 200 million people!

Congratulations to Derby for having the first food assembly in the county. If anyone has the time and commitment to start one elsewhere, you’ll find some guidelines here https://foodassembly.com/en/p/open.

For a Europe of welcome and hospitality

Tomorrow, June 20th, is World Refugee Day and last week, refugees  lost a passionate advocate when Jo Cox was murdered by a man who appears to believe he was defending our country.

We cannot know yet what exactly triggered this atrocity and I truly believe that political leaders were sincerely shocked and horrified. But there’s no doubt that the referendum campaign has become poisonous – full of fear and hatred.

So, for World Refugee Day, it’s high time to stand up to the fear and hatred, and turn to our basic humanity and to call for our country to stay in Europe, to be part of a caring and compassionate response to the desperate plight of people fleeing war, economic meltdown, and environmental catastrophes (which will only get worse if we don’t work together).

We say no to:

• Participating in or sponsoring wars that bring about death and destruction, and force thousands of people to flee.
• The closure of borders and to the inhuman treatment of people who are seeking safety in our countries.
• Shameful agreements with Turkey and Libya that allow for deportation of refugees in direct violation of Universal Declaration on Human Rights.
• The senseless differentiation between war refugees and people fleeing economic and environmental catastrophes. Wars, the global economic crisis and environmental disasters have causes that are directly connected and they all rob entire populations of the possibility of survival.

We also need a responsible media that refuses to take part in spreading disinformation and unfounded alarmism about non-existent “invasions” and rising threat of terrorism from refugees. In fact, the numbers are manageable with cooperation between European states.

On World Refugee Day, let’s reject the barbed wire, fences, detention camps, and the fear of the “other”, the “different”. Let’s build a Europe of welcome and hospitality.

Professor Michael Dower, former director of the Peak District National Park and John Youatt, a life member of the Green Party based in Derbyshire Dales, talk about their reasons for voting to remain the the EU.

We have been reading the material published by those who are for and against the UK’s continuing membership of the EU. Much of the debate seems to focus on the economic impact, either way, and on migration. We are not economists, but feel we are best served by staying in the EU, with a full voice in its future, while trading with others around the world. The economic debate seems to be drifting into a stalemate.

Meanwhile, our wish to stay in the EU is driven by six other principles – peace, freedom, citizenship, protection, solidarity and the rich exchange of ideas.
Peace

After two terrible world wars, we value highly the peace that Europe has enjoyed for over 70 years. The founders of the European Union believed, rightly, that peace could be secured by former enemies talking and by creating, eventually, a prosperous transnational community. Britain’s presence in both the EU and UN is vital in order to balance the economic and political power of other nations. It enables us to promote mutual trust and cooperation, to anticipate tensions and resolve conflicts, rather than to go to war.
Freedom of movement

We are deeply moved to see the attraction of freedom, for which people flee here from zones of conflict and economic hardship. We should be deeply proud of this view of the UK and Europe, as a theatre of human freedom, and believe we should respond generously, within reason, to the needs of these refugees and migrants. Within the EU, the freedom of movement and of trade is a net benefit to the United Kingdom, bringing skilled workers to sustain our national health service and other sectors, and offering opportunity for our own citizens to travel, work and live anywhere in the Union. We must make proper infrastructural provision for net growth in our population and not pretend otherwise.
Citizenship

We value greatly being both a citizen (not subject) of the UK and a citizen of the European Union. This means that we can vote for, lobby and consult councillors or members of parliament at parish, district, county, national and European level. It means that we can move freely around Europe, benefitting without charge from the national health services of all EU countries.

Protection

While mutual and cooperative models are growing, private sector companies predominate in the UK’s mixed economy They are required by law to maximise profits for shareholders. During right wing governments, the EU has and will provide balancing protections for human rights, workers’ rights, and consumers’ rights, and for the protection of the environment, habitats, climate and wildlife.

Solidarity

The EU is committed to raising the standards of living throughout the 28 member countries. Its regional funds are used to strengthen the economies of the weaker regions, including four UK regions and elsewhere. Its agricultural and rural funds help to sustain the farming industry, rural economies and the environment in the whole of rural Europe, including our own country. Its support to the ‘accession and neighbourhood’ countries which lie near, but still outside, the Union is a powerful force for promoting democracy and the rule of law in those countries. The UK should continue to contribute to, and to benefit from, this process of social and economic development on a continental scale.

Exchange of ideas

The high diversity and cultural wealth of Europe makes available to all its citizens an extraordinarily rich array of experience and ideas, which we can use to strengthen the society, economy and culture of the UK. This is reflected in many fields – tourism; twinning of towns and cities; access to European universities for our students through the Erasmus programme; massive opportunities for our researchers to launch multi-national projects, in cooperation with the brightest brains in many countries. We believe that this exchange, in all its forms, is deeply enriching to life in the UK.

For all these reasons, we hope to keep our European citizenship and be part of a United Kingdom which is fully committed to sustaining peace, freedom and solidarity in Europe; which contributes actively to the great exchange of ideas in Europe; and which puts continuing energy into building a shared and prosperous European economy.

Michael Dower is Visiting Professor of European Rural Development at the University of Gloucestershire. He has a long career in civil society and in government in England. For the last 30 years, he has also been actively involved in rural affairs in Europe, as a consultant to governments, as a teacher, as an adviser, and as a leader of civil society movements – ECOVAST, PREPARE, ARC2020, Euracademy and others.

 

We trade air and water pollution. We share wildlife and fish, who don’t carry passports

Europe is our geography and its political, security and environmental problems are ours. Voting to leave the EU won’t change that but it will deprive us of a voice in Europe’s future – in our future.

Natalie Bennett may be stepping down as leader of the Green Party, but she isn’t slowing down just yet. She’s on an almost non-stop tour of England and Wales in support of the party’s Greens for Europe Campaign and she visited Loughborough last Thursday and Sheffield last Friday.

Lamenting the poor quality of much of the debate so far in the mainstream media ” a Tory leadership contest masquerading as a referendum campaign ” Natalie contrasted this with the Green Party’s commitment to ” what the EU is and what it can be “. Asserting the general principle that ” we flourish best when we work together to confront the common problems that we face ” Natalie applied this to the UK’s position in the Europe, whose people shared common problems and aspirations.

Workers across Europe had a common interest in protecting their health and safety and employment rights, and to avoid being undercut in a ‘race to the bottom’. Multinational companies sought to avoid paying taxes and there needed to be European wide initiatives to tackle this. We cannot rely on our own government to address this. Indeed George Osborne used UK taxpayers money to make a legal challenge when the EU acted to cap bankers bonuses.

On the issue of immigration Natalie said that we should celebrate the free movement of labour and of people. Over a million UK citizens worked elsewhere in the EU, and others had retired to the Mediterranean, to enjoy the sun and full access to local healthcare. The real concerns that people had about pressures on public services and housing were not the fault of immigration but rather of failed government policies and a failure of ‘ free market’ policies. Pointing out that EU citizens ” are more likely to be treating you as health workers than being treated as patients ” in the NHS, Natalie reminded us that almost twice as much is spent on healthcare in both France and Germany as a proportion of national wealth.

We need to Stay in Europe to change Europe  and this was the best way to defend and enhance the wellbeing of both people in the UK and across the EU. Popular protest against the proposed free trade agreement with the USA ( TTIP) which threatened the higher environmental, consumer and employment standards which applied in Europe and which multinational companies wished to challenge, had already delayed and might permanently prevent implementation of the agreement. European governments had been required to take notice of the three and a half million EU citizens who had signed a petition against TTIP ( perhaps the biggest  petition in history ) and the 250,000 who had marched in Berlin in opposition. Green MEPs , working together from across Europe, had led the opposition to TTIP in the European Parliament.

Natalie welcomed the militancy of French trade unionists who were currently taking action to defend workers rights and the fact that millions of Germans ( 7-8% of the population) had actively helped refugees arriving in their country- donating food, clothing and money, and rooms in their homes. It was encouraging to learn that opinion polls indicated that UK citizens were the most sympathetic to refugees in the whole of Europe, which was in sharp contrast to the picture often painted in the mainstream media. A fair and reasonable formula for distributing refuges across Europe had been proposed by the often demonised European Commission. It had been rejected by ( mostly right wing) national governments, including our own unrepresentative one ( elected by only 24% of eligible voters as Natalie said she was always anxious to remind her audiences )

Natalie concluded by reaffirming that ” we need to improve our quality of life whilst reducing our environmental impact” and that this would not be helped by voting to leave the EU. Rather a Brexit vote would empower racists and reactionaries across Europe. Polls indicated that the result was likely to be close and Greens should do every vote counted equally , there were no ‘ safe seats’ . There were many who were alienated from and angry with our unjust and unequal politics and society and who may be tempted to vote  ‘ Leave’ as an outlet for their frustration. Some could  be persuaded by our positive Greens for Europe  message and activists should make an effort to reach as many of them as possible in the last few weeks of the campaign.

Natalie speaking in Sheffield, 3rd June 2016

We’re fast approaching the EU referendum, and though we hear claim and counter claim about membership, we’ve heard hardly anything about the work of our representatives in the European Parliament. Indeed, if you are relying on the BBC for information, you could believe that only UKIP has any MEPs – and be forgiven for thinking they don’t do very much.  Paul Tattam, a Green Party member based in  the High Peak, has complained to the BBC more than once about the monopoly given to UKIP MEPs in programmes like Question Time. Here, he provides an overview of the work done by the European Parliament.

Twenty eight European countries with a combined population of over half a billion people are represented by the 751 members elected by voters in the member states. The United Kingdom has 73 MEPs – the third highest representation of any country.
A proportional representation electoral system favours allows small parties, like the Greens to be well represented. There are 50 Green MEPs in the parliament – three are from the UK – Jean Lambert is a representative for London, Keith Taylor for the South East, and Molly Scott-Cato for the South West.

What do our MEPS do?
The threats facing our world in the 21st century – climate change and environmental degradation, tax avoidance and corruption, terrorism, war and refugee crises – are all issues that can only be addressed internationally – and this is precisely what the Members of the European Parliament do.

‘Dieselgate’ – the extent of the conspiracy by car manufacturers to cheat the public about the nature of emissions from their vehicles is an issue that European Greens are currently pursuing – making sure that this threat to our health and safety doesn’t disappear from view.
Air quality – Green MEPs have worked hard to get improvements in the appalling quality of the air many of our towns and cities. It is a tribute to the tenacity of MEPs that the British Government is now once again facing action in the High Court over its inaction over poor air, despite the censure of the UK Supreme Court in 2015.

But Green MEPs aren’t just involved in environmental issues – foreign affairs, economic policy, transport and tourism, tax avoidance, and rural affairs are all committees that our Green MEPs work on.

When we travel to EU countries or holiday or work, it’s easy to forget that it wasn’t always so easy. For example, MEPs have worked to reciprocal health care agreements so we can rely on treatment when aboard. Our own beaches have benefited from the rules on the quality of bathing water introduced by the EU. More recently MEPs have worked hard to stop us being ripped off by exorbitant roaming charges when we travel in EU countries. There are opportunities for exchanges and study programmes in Europe, and hundreds of thousands of UK citizens benefit from the right to work in another EU country without red tape.

It’s easy to contact your MEP. Contact details are available on the European Parliament Website (www.europarl.europa.eu), where you an also find out about the issues MEPs are dealing with. Our own MEPs Roger Helmer, Glenis Willmott, Andrew Lewer, Emma McClarkin, and Margot Parker from three different parties, and it is our right to expect any one of these members to answer our questions.

For more information about our Green MEPs

Jean Lambert

Keith Taylor

Molly Scott Cato

Recently a few of us from the Green Party went along to a public debate on EU membership at the University of Derby in Buxton. One of the first things we saw when we arrived was a leaflet from the Brexit camp claiming that the only way to save our NHS is to leave the EU. A closer look showed that the threat comes from TTIP, the secretive treaty that the US and the EU have been negotiating, whose details have come out in a series of leaks.

The Green Party doesn’t underrate the threat to our democracy and to the health and well-being of Europeans and of our environment that TTIP represents. Green MEPs have been in the forefront of the campaign to cancel TTIP, moving the European Parliament from a position in which they were likely to just rubber stamp the treaty to a much more critical position.

But do we really believe that TTIP is THE immediate threat to our health service? The reorganisation of the NHS in the last parliament already opened the NHS up to privatisation, allowing private firms to cherry pick profitable services. Nothing Jeremy Hunt has done demonstrates a commitment to a publicly funded NHS, free at the point of use – certainly not the arrogant contempt he has shown for the junior doctors.

Recent disclosures show that while other EU governments have insisted on explicit exclusion of their health services from the trade deal, the UK has not. The reasonable conclusion is that a Tory post-Brexit government would allow areas of privatisation to continue and increase, and would write them into UK-only free trade deals.

Thanks to the work done by opponents of TTIP, there is now a real chance of defeating the deal. Of course, that’s not the end of the matter. TTIP is a symptom, an almost inevitable result of the same economic policies that brought is the financial crash in 2008. It sets out the same demands for corporations to be free to exploit human and natural resources, free from all restraint, with economic growth as the only measure of worth. In the Green Party, we believe a different type of economy is both necessary and possible, and that we can work with other Europeans to achieve it. Come and join us!

What has the EU ever done for our environment in the East Midlands?

The EU is responsible for about 80% of our environmental laws in the UK.

Climate change

Climate Change is our greatest threat today. It increases the frequency of extreme weather conditions like flooding; it will threaten our food security and sea levels will rise, reducing land mass and causing mass migration.

Flooding has been an increasing problem in the East Midlands (for example in Lincolnshire). This is not only tragic for the individuals concerned, but also costly.

Increasingly unpredictable weather in East Midlands puts agriculture and food production at risk leading to higher food prices and putting farming livelihoods at risk.

Climate has no borders, and we must work together with other countries to address this. The EU has been a significant part of the international efforts to tackle climate change; and the UK must work with the EU to get effective international action to limit climate change.

Wildlife

Prior to EU legislation, protected wildlife sites were being diminished by 15% a year. After the passing of the EU’s Natura 2000 and the birds and habitat directive, this has been reduced to 1%.

EU legislation was instrumental in protecting many types of marine wildlife and fish; without these, many species would now face extinction.

Protecting birds and fish must be done together with our neighbours, as these species travel across borders. If the UK, for example, reduces fishing of an endangered species, it becomes pointless if our neighbours continue to fish it indiscriminately.

There are internationally valuable habitats in the East Midlands, including the Peak District Moorlands and parts of the Lincolnshire coast that are protected by EU directives and will be at risk from a Brexit.

Pollution

Our seas as well as our air have been heavily polluted, and consequently our wildlife and our own health have suffered.

EU legislation has ensured that our beaches in Lincolnshire have become much cleaner. The EU landfill site directive has been driving local authorities’ recycling efforts, and overall this important legislation will ensure that we will have to reduce our landfill waste and will further drive up recycling.

Particularly in urban areas like Leicester, Nottingham and Derby, our air has been shown to be heavily polluted. Nationally, 29,000 people die prematurely every year, directly linked to air pollution. Our three major cities in the East Midlands are affected by this and the EU legislation is ensuring that we must address this.

So please consider voting to stay in, so we can continue to protect our environment with our European colleagues.

Do you drink Fair Trade coffee or tea? Ever eaten a “Devine” chocolate bar? Do you always make sure that you chose the Fair Trade banana’s in the supermarket? Did you know that you can also get Fair Trade gold as well as Fair Trade toilet rolls? Fair Trade is a phenomena that is rising around the world and South Derbyshire Greens are keen to know more about the movement.

The Fair Trade movement started in 1992 when a group of charities that do considerable work in developing companies got together to form a foundation. Their premise is to provide an alternative form of international trading conditions which allow farmers and workers to financially benefit from growing crops and produce. Many of the Fair Trade producing companies are partially owned by the farmers themselves. The Fair Trade Foundation states that it is “Working to secure a better deal for workers and farmers”. It also cares for the welfare of workers, ensuring that working conditions are of a good standard. It is a global concern with 1.5 million farmers and workers involved across the planet.

The ethos of Fair Trade fits beautifully into the policies and ethos of the Green Party. We (I speak as a Green Party member) believe in social justice and greater equality, which is what Fair Trade aspires to do. Although international import of produce is not necessarily encouraged; the 2015 manifesto states that the Green Party will “work to reduce food imports and increase home and local food production where feasible” there are some produce that are very difficult to grow in our climate. Have you ever seen a chocolate plantation in the UK? However, Green Party Policy recognises that sustainable societies are vital across the globe and therefore has included the following policy:

IP122 A General Agreement on Sustainable Trade, under which fair trade rules (where producers are guaranteed a reasonable price for their products before planting, and a portion of the payment is set aside for community development) would become a requisite for international trade and local supply of goods would be preferred, should replace the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). A World Localisation Organisation should replace the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

To find out more about the Fair Trade movement, Fair Trade produce and Fair Trade shops join South Derbyshire Greens

May 31^st, 7pm
Fair2all,
17 Bath Street,
Ashby de la Zouch LE65 2FH

Mandy McIntosh, the founder of Fair2all, will speak. She has been involved with the Fair Trade movement for over 20 years and has written a number of magazine articles about the movement. An added bonus is that the talk will be in a Fair Trade shop, and there will be refreshments on offer.

Marianne Bamkin, South Derbyshire Greens

Today, for the first time since the NHS was founded, junior doctors have taken all-out strike action to oppose imposition of a contract that they say would make patient care unsafe by over-stretching staff who are already at breaking point. Despite attempts by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to smear the doctors, most people believe that the government has forced the doctors into taking this action.  But to what purpose?

Including NHS privatisation in an election manifesto is political suicide – so the current government included a 7-day NHS, but omitted to provide extra staffing.

So, where there’s a will there’s a way and this crisis is only the latest step in a strategy of creeping privatisation that’s been going forward for some years. While publicly declaring their commitment to the NHS, the coalition government abolished the legal duty of the Secretary of State to provide health care and introduced measures to dismantle the NHS leaving you so dissatisfied that you turn to private insurance, if you can afford it.

And the demolition continues under the current government. While the government continues to claim it has maintained spending on front-line services, cuts to social care and other budget decisions have brought our NHS to the point of collapse.

Hidden away in this year’s budget was a 30% cut to the NHS capital budget – money for repairs to buildings and repair and replacement of broken or out-of-date equipment. That leaves a shortfall of more than £1 billion for current work and replacement before the year begins.

Hospitals have been fined millions of pounds that could have been spent on patients because they didn’t meet response targets. How’s that supposed to help? To be fair, the system used to have some kind of logic. Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), which include GPs, could withhold funds if targets weren’t reached, but it was at the discretion of the CCG. If they saw a consistent failure in a particular area, they paid the money with the condition that it be spent improving the failing area. But now, CCGs have been instructed to withhold the money, decreasing funding and driving struggling services deeper into failure.

Take this together with the dispute over doctors’ contracts and the “plan” to deliver a 7-day NHS with no increase in funding or staffing and a frightening picture emerges. With doctors and other health care staff spread ever more thinly, targets such as waiting times in A&E will inevitably be missed, triggering a vicious circle of withheld funds and deteriorating services.

We need to stand up for our health service, for the patients and for the people who work in it. As a first step, why not write to your MP about these issues? But fixing single issues isn’t enough. We need our NHS fully restored as a public service. Green MP Caroline Lucas has been at the forefront in taking the fight to parliament, introducing the NHS Reinstatement bill to reverse the creeping privatisation carried out by successive governments (http://www.carolinelucas.com/issues/health).

When Japanese Knotweed was first introduced into this country nearly two
 hundred years ago as an ornamental plant, no-one would guessed what menace it would become. Likewise when Tony Blair’s government opened the first Academy in Bexley 16 years ago, the privately run, but publicly funded initiative was trumpeted as a way of trying to break a cycle of failure in areas with extremely challenging conditions. But should all state schools be forced to become Academies?

Many government initiatives over the years have been heralded as saviours of one aspect of the educational system or another. In the 1980s the Assisted Places Scheme was Mrs Thatcher’s big idea to break the mould by promote the merits of independent schools over comprehensives; more recently Free Schools are supposed to deliver parental choice and flexibility of the curriculum…..

This latest announcement on the future of Academies in the 2016 Budget is a quite extraordinary development. Perhaps even more controversial is that the proposal also includes the abolition of the right of a parent to sit on a school’s governing body, just by dint of being a parent of a child in the school. Whatever one thinks of Academies, the idea that local authorities should be simply cut out of the management of schools, a role they have had had since 1870, is almost unbelievable. Proposing to strip parents of their right to join a schools Governing Body and participate in the process of their child’s education is astonishing.

Academies may in some instances be quite small bodies, but many academies are now part of academy chains. The largest chain, the Academies Enterprise Trust (AET) , runs 67 academies across England. Does it perform well in this role ? In February 2016 this chain in England was accused by Ofsted of “failing too many pupils“. The inspectors described almost half of the schools in the chain as “less than good“, and warned that poorer pupils do “particularly badly“.

The plans announced in the budget would see our schools and their assets given into the control of private organisations, who are often operating for profit and always operating without local, democratic oversight.

The Derbyshire Times recently reported that “as many as half of all lessons in some Derbyshire academies are being taught by unqualified staff”.

Opposition is mounting to this policy – unannounced in the Conservative Party General Election manifesto – even among Conservative MPs and leaders of some Conservative controlled councils. So, we have a chance of stopping this privatisation of our children’s education. In our own county, parents and teachers organised in  Matlock and Derbyshire Anti-Academies have held well-attended protests. Get involved!

Whereas Government and politicians come and go, our children only get one chance to pass through the educational system. The Green Party believes in a well-funded, accountable school system which should have the welfare of all our children at its core, and which should not be endangered by the latest fad, or short-sighted career aspiration of Westminster politicians.

Have your say about this vital issue! Write to your MP, tweet your point of view, write to Nicky Morgan (nicky.morgan.mp@parliament.uk), Secretary of State for Education!

The forced conversion of all state schools to academy status is one insanity too far!

Paul Tattam and Jane Reynolds

Green Party Spring Conference 2016 
Friday 26 – Sunday 28 February
Harrogate International Centre

Spring Conference – in its new shorter format – will be held at the Harrogate International Centre – the third largest conference and exhibition centre in the UK – in the lovely spa town of Harrogate on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales.

Booking

Bookings are now open! Get the best prices by booking online before 14 February.
We do everything we can to keep the cost of attendance down, and we hope that the shorter format will be welcome for that reason, but for those who would not be able to cover the costs of attendance themselves there is also a limited access fund.

Non-members are also very welcome to attend and can either book using the form on the website, or can pay on the door.

Timetable and agenda

Conference is a chance for members from all over the UK to get together not only to discuss and vote on policy motions, but also to network, socialise and learn. As well as nine hours of discussion time and around 12 workshops dedicated to policy, there will also be:

• 16 training sessions on local party organisation, campaigns, media, policy, electoral activism, etc
• 20 informative fringe sessions run by party members or staff
• 3 topical panel debates open to the public with high level external speakers
• Evening entertainment programme
• Exhibition including members groups as well as external organisations and campaigns

An outline timetable is available on the website. The first agenda (list of motions accepted) and the prioritisation ballot is open on the members’ website until 25 January.

Details of how to apply to run a fringe are online.

Travel

Harrogate is 35 mins by train from Leeds.

Check the travel page of the conference website

If you are seeking or offering a seat in a car you can use our Liftshare scheme.

Accomodation

There is a huge selection of hotels and B&Bs right on the door step of the venue, and we have arranged allocations at a few local hotels. See the accommodation page on the website for more info and booking.

Creche

Children between the ages of 1 and 11 are welcome to join the Conference Creche, which is run by fully qualified, DBS checked staff. And all absolutely free of charge to Green Party members who are attending the Conference! (Refundable deposit required).

Latest news

Keep up to date with our plans for Spring Conference on social with #GPConf
and https://www.facebook.com/events/714590818675803/

If you can’t join us there, why not watch the Leader’s speech and plenary sessions live online!

How to hold a policy discussion with your local party

About the priority ballot

More information on the website. www.greenparty.org.uk